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Aggression in the Academic Workplace: a Psychodynamic Analysis of Social Work

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Aggression in the Academic Workplace: a Psychodynamic Analysis of Social Work Journal of Social Work Practice Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community ISSN: 0265-0533 (Print) 1465-3885 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjsw20 Aggression in the academic workplace: a psychodynamic analysis of social work George Karpetis To cite this article: George Karpetis (2018): Aggression in the academic workplace: a psychodynamic analysis of social work, Journal of Social Work Practice To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2018.1478394 Published online: 29 May 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjsw20 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2018.1478394 Aggression in the academic workplace: a psychodynamic analysis of social work George Karpetis College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Aiming to promote quality collegial relationships in tertiary education, Aggression; academic; this theoretical study draws on the peer-reviewed literature to provide psychodynamic; social a psychodynamic analysis of workplace aggression in the social work; clinical supervision; work discipline. Because the study assists academics to identify their university aggressive practices and the aggressive practices of their colleagues, the findings can be of relevance to other practice-based disciplines. Elaborating on the causes and effects of the disciplinary, institutional and individual forms of aggression, this study identifies the avoidance of the emotional pain in work with clients as the main reason behind the active or passive–aggressive behaviours in the discipline. Academics act out this defensive manoeuvre through denying the existence of knowledge gaps in the discipline, denying the inextricable link between empirical research and theories of practice, teaching exclusively theories unsupported by empirical studies, and resisting to set boundaries on active and passive aggression. The study proposes the advancement of research-into-practice mindedness in social work schools, the requirement that prospective social work academics gain considerable practice experience before entering academia, the need for academic leadership positions to require peer-reviewed publications in both teaching and practice and the need for Schools to publish a volume of empirical research to be accredited as providers of social work education. Introduction The quality of education provided in social work schools directly impacts the quality of social work practice. Aggression in the professional relationships of academics bears significant repercussions for the quality of teaching and, subsequently, the services provided to clients. Mobbing and bullying are forms of aggression in workplaces, including at universities (Keim & McDermott, 2010). For the psychodynamic perspective, aggression results from conscious or unconscious wishes and fears and develops within the first two years of a person’s life. Aggression is exhibited in active or passive forms, and at an individual, group or organisational level (Fleischer, 2017). CONTACT George Karpetis [email protected] © 2018 GAPS G. KARPETIS 2 Various psychoanalytic authors discussed the origins of aggression. Sigmund Freud (1959) argued that groups operating under the crowd mentality are entirely conservative and with a deep aversion to innovations or advances, due to their unbounded respect for tradition. The feelings of individuals in these groups are elementary and exaggerated to prevent doubt or uncertainty. Suspicions become an incontrovertible certainty, while antip- athy becomes furious hatred. Participants in such primary groups are not interested in the truth, but only in illusions. They place the leader in the place of theirego ideal and identify with each other. Klein (2002) added that the aggression instinct occupies a significant part of ‘normal’ emotional development, taking the form of hate, greed, envy or resentment. She further argued that the displacement of anger, hate and rage, emanate from the child’s ambivalence towards their loved objects. The ability to bare ambivalence signifies emotional maturity, or else, capacity to integrate at any given time the conflicting emotions of love and hate for the same person and oneself. Emotionally painful experiences generate the primitive defences of splitting (between good and bad) or projective identification of the emotionally unbearable experiences on others (Spillius, Milton, Garvey, Couve, & Steiner, 2011). Winnicott and Khan (1965) reinforced the message that aggression develops in relationships. They defined as pathological aggression the reaction to trauma and loss of the facilitating maternal environment (the holding functions of the mother) and understood antisocial acts (behaviours of anger, resentment and violence) as an attempt to regain the lost maternal object (Yakeley & Meloy, 2012). Bion (1952) described how unconscious defences operate in group relationships in the form of (1) dependency towards an imaginative parental figure causing frustration and disempowerment when the needs of the worker are not met, (2) fight manifested as aggres- sion against peers, elimination, boycotting and privileged relationships with authority, or flight that involves avoidance of others, sickness, resigning, rationalising or intellectualising and (3) pairing to cope with alienation and loneliness by relating to perceived powerful individuals or cope with anxiety stirred by diversity. Pairing results in ganging up against the perceived aggressor and intragroup conflicts. Splitting into the idealised ‘good’ and denigrated (hated) ‘bad’ is a common defence against persecutory anxiety and springs from narcissistic idealisations or destructive denigrations of the collegial relationships (Cilliers & Koortzen, 2000). Academics approach work situations with unconscious expectations and needs (i.e. affection towards the manager or competition with co-workers experienced as siblings). However, because colleagues are neither siblings nor parents, these unfulfilled needs stir past anxieties, acted out as active or passive aggression (Cilliers & Koortzen, 2000). In social work, theory and practice uncertainties are regarded the outcome of the periph- eral place of the discipline in the academia and the unclear departmental location alongside social policy, health, sociology and education. However, not much research exists on profes- sional, organisational and individual factors generating workplace aggression in various dis- ciplines, including in social work. Despite professionalisation problems of the discipline have been reported in the literature (Brandell, 2013; Carpenter, 2011; Colby, 2013; Drisko, 2014; Fleischer, 2017; Fong, 2012; Green, 2006; Khinduka, 2007; Moriarty, Manthorpe, Stevens, & Hussein, 2015; Stoesz & Karger, 2008; Thyer, 2009), there is limited information on individual and institutional factors generating aggression. Aiming to highlight causes and effects of the disciplinary, institutional and individual aggression in the academic environment, this study draws on the literature and employs fictitious examples to provide a psychodynamic analysis of aggression, before proposing interventions that prevent and eliminate aggression. JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE 3 Aggression in the discipline Dynamics of social work knowledge Role conflict and role ambiguity can escalate into aggression (Bartlett & Bartlett, 2011). Theoretical uncertainty in a discipline generates uncertainty about its role, function, purpose or relationship with other disciplines (Green, 2006). Such is the difficulty of social work to agree on a shared set of educational curriculum objectives (Drisko, 2014). Social work is an applied, practice-based discipline that draws on multiple theoretical perspectives, while much of its knowledge derives either from other disciplines or practice wisdom; essentially because little research exists on how exactly knowledge is effectively operationalised in practice (Karpetis, 2014a, 2016a, 2017a, 2017b, 2018a; Khinduka, 2007). Uncertainty about the knowledge domain of a discipline generates anxiety, eventually acted out as defensive behaviours aiming to counteract dependency (Bion, 1952). Such is the identifications of social work academics with other disciplines offering a much stronger sense of identity, clear disciplinary boundaries and ‘better academic status’. Examples of these identifications are the ‘sociological social work’ and ‘psychiatric social work’ terms. The defensive splitting between theory and practice stems from anxiety about practice uncertainty or the low academic status of a discipline. Anxiety prevents ‘thinking about’; therefore, theorising from practice. In social work, splitting generates tensions between macro- and micro-practice (Jerrold R Brandell, 2013), poorly substantiated theory with empirical studies (Stoesz & Karger, 2008) or identification of the profession as a simple, practical activity rather than as a professional occupation (Green, 2006). Uncertainty about the professional identity similarly results from the identification of social work with political ideologies (Khinduka, 2007; Thyer, 2009), and the idealisation, or devaluation, of theoreti- cal perspectives. The persecutory nature of the devalued theories can generate denial of the significance
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