The Primary Risk

Abstract

In the Tavistock tradition, we understand an organization by first identifying its primary task. We ask, what is this organization set up to do, how is it organized to accomplish this objective, and what unconscious dynamics limit or distort its members' ability to do their work? This approach while powerful, does not help us understand organizations that live at strategic junctures in their life cycles. In these situations, the task is to choose a task. We need a conceptual framework to help us understand the psychodynamics of organizing and deciding in these situations. The following article develops the concept of the "primary risk' to explain how organizations behave in these situations. It links the primary risk to the psychoanalytic idea of ambivalence and the gestalt idea of the figure/ground relationship. It draws on case material to illuminate its concepts.