Taking a stance- a systems-psychodynamic view against the war

Dr Simon Western founder of the Eco-Leadership Institute

Introduction

Drawing on my background of psychoanalytic thinking, systems thinking, group relations (GRC) insights I would like to challenge some of the perspectives I have heard from colleagues in my field, about the current war. A number of systemic and psychodynamic informed colleagues have made a link between systemic-psychodynamic thinking and not taking sides, and by implication not taking a stance on the Russian Ukraine war. Their argument usually goes like this; ‘we mustn’t fall into the trap of binary’s and blame’, ‘we mustn’t take a paranoid-schizoid position’. ‘If we take a systems-psychodynamic perspective we see that there are no clear rights and wrongs, that we are all implicated’. ‘Deeper and more systemic insights are needed to understand this war, don’t just blame Russia’. ‘It’s too easy to create Putin as a bad object and position Ukrainians as the good object’

My response is that this is a poor use of systemic, psychodynamic or group relations thinking, that brings our field into disrepute. I believe that coaches, consultants, therapists, psychologists and others who make up our field and are informed by psychodynamic and systemic thinking should take a stance against the aggression and war. I set out in this short…