Psychodynamics at Work First Annual Conference

The conference will take place on Friday and Saturday, 28th and 29th March, 2025.  From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the Friday, and 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. on the Saturday.

The conference will feature expert presentations on organisational development, leadership, and group dynamics. It will include interviews, discussions, and experiential workshops from a systems psychodynamic perspective. The full schedule will be available soon.

Keynote Speaker and Conference Director 

Dr. Evelyn P. Gilmore is a psychodynamic and systemic organisational consultant, a chartered psychologist, an accredited psychotherapist and a business and executive coach, coach trainer and coach supervisor.  Evelyn has an honours degree in psychology from the University of Galway and a first class honours masters in Work & Organisational Psychology from Dublin City University.  She has completed a professional doctorate with the Tavistock in “Consultation and the Organisation”.  Her doctorate research was on the creation of a holding environment in an organisational setting and on managing the emotional aspects of organisational life during times of organisational change.  She is founder and director of Psychodynamics at Work, and joint director of Coach Institute of Ireland.  Evelyn has lectured to masters students in the department of management in the University of Galway, and has also been a Visiting Lecturer to doctorate students in the Tavistock.   She has recently published an article entitled “Creating a holding environment in an organisational setting:  A systems psychodynamics first person action research perspective” in the Organisational and Social Dynamics journal. 

Keynote Speaker:  Dr. Evelyn P. Gimore will speak on “Creating a Holding Environment in an Organisational Setting and on Helping Leaders to Manage the Emotional Aspects of Organisational Life During Times of Change”

Holding environment as a concept was developed within psychoanalysis by Winnicott (1964).  Winnicott focused on the mother’s relationship with the baby just before birth and in the first few weeks after birth.  Winnicott (1965) and others further used the holding environment concept to describe the analytic setting.   They talked about the psychoanalyst creating the holding environment through unwavering attentiveness to the patient’s experiences, needs, and development; by facilitating the patient’s arriving at her or his own insights; and by allowing, without judgment, the expression of affect, dreams, wishes, creativity, and play. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, I understand holding environments at work to be interpersonal or group based relationships that help individuals to manage situations that trigger potentially debilitating anxiety or loss in the workplace. 

During times of organisational change, leaders perform the behaviours that are the constants of leadership.  These constants include creating vision and mission, establishing goals and objectives, enabling systems and structures, motivating, challenging, empowering and inspiring others, and aligning people’s efforts with one another and with the environments in which they work. However, leaders, managers, and organisational consultants must also understand and manage the emotions that are inevitably aroused by change.  

During times of organisational change, individuals may fear the loss of their job or status.  Individuals may have anxiety about the loss of known ways of working.   Employees may be asked to take new risks, generating uncertainty and fear of failure.   Individuals may become concerned that the meaning that their work had for them, which may have been aligned with their beliefs and values, will change as a result of organisational change.    Mismanaging such insecurity and anxiety is costly to individuals who are disabled in moments of uncertainty, confusion, or distress as well as to organisations that depend on their work.

Evelyn, drawing from her doctorate research, will explain the concept of holding.  She will provide an opportunity for leaders and managers to understand how the emotional aspects of organisational life can create resistance and interfere with the overall effectiveness of organisational life.  Most importantly, Evelyn, drawing from her own organisational consultancy experience, will further discuss how managers and leaders can understand and manage the emotional aspects of organisational life and how they can help individuals and teams to overcome those moments of anxiety, uncertainty and confusion in order to create greater effectiveness within organisational life.

Special Guest Speaker and Conference Consultant

Dr. Martin Lüdemann holds an MA in Organisational Analysis from the University of East London and is a graduate of the Psychology Diploma Programme (industrial and organizational psychology) of the University of Darmstadt, Germany.  He recently finished the Professional Doctorate Program at Tavistock Consulting and the University of Essex.  Martin has been working as a psychologist and supervisor for 30 years.  He consults, supports and guides groups and individuals in organizations – mostly in the business sector, but also groups in the social sector.  Martin began his professional life as a consultant at Lufthansa Consulting in Cologne and co-founded Dr. Sourisseaux, Lüdemann and Partners in 1996. He was a partner in the firm of consultant business psychologists in Darmstadt for 17 years before going into business on his own in 2013.  In addition, he has also completed further training courses in group dynamics, systemic consulting, large-group techniques, supervision coaching, group analysis and group relations (Tavistock Consulting and Grubb Institute). 

Dr. Martin Lüdemann will speak on “The Psychodynamics of Groups and how The Concept of Group-as-a-Whole can Support Leaders in engaging with groups in Organisations”.

The concept of Group-as-a-Whole is a psychoanalytic concept.   It is an applied branch of group dynamics research and theory.  So what is this concept of Group-as-a-whole?  A Group-as-a-whole is a living organism in itself.  It is as distinct as the individuals comprising it.  The Group-as-a-Whole has moods, reactions, spirit, atmosphere, and climate.  When individuals form a group, the resulting union becomes an entity in its own right with developmental, structural, dynamic and relational properties that both reflect and transcend the individuals that make it up.  

The idea that a group behaves “as a whole” is a proven psychoanalytic concept first

introduced by Bion (1961).  Bion showed that individuals can become unconsciously caught up in different strands of the group process as if they were puppets being controlled and manipulated by an invisible puppeteer.   In addition, Bion’s understanding that groups and teams can be working hard at their task (or think they are) while paradoxically also engaging in behaviour that is obstructive and anti-task. is one of the most important ideas in the field of group dynamics. He was one of the first to suggest that groups and teams can engage in overt processes, for example, working on goals, producing deliverables, fulfilling action items; while also engaging in covert processes, for example, sabotaging a colleague, de-authorising the group leader, working against the group’s greater good.

In Martin’s talk and discussion, he will draw on his own doctorate research to illuminate the concept of group-as-a-whole.  He will also draw on a consultancy case.   Most importantly, Martin will show how the concept of the group-as-a-whole can be useful for today’s leaders, especially when confronted with tensions, various anxieties, unhappiness, discontent, and ineffectiveness.  He will show how the understanding and use of this concept can help facilitate the developmental process at both the group and individual level in order to have more effective organisational outcomes. 

Conference Cost:

€690 plus 23% Vat of €158.70. 

Total Cost: €848.70