Interest Group System Psychodynamics of Organisations presents...

The Nature of the Unconscious in Organisational Life

This 1.5 days Group Relations Working Conference Experience (GRC) is an intensive, experiential event in which participants join staff to form a temporary organisation and use its unfolding life as the primary text. The conference is grounded in systems psychodynamics and Tavistock / Group Relations traditions, with a particular focus on authority, role, boundary and task, and the way unconscious processes shape organisational behaviour.

The primary task of the conference is:

To study the exercise of authority and the taking up of leadership and other roles within a temporary organisation, in the “here-and-now,” with attention to conscious and unconscious dynamics.

Content and focus
Across the 1.5 days, participants will work with:

• The system-as-a-whole, and how individuals are taken up by roles as much as they “take up” roles in turbulent organisations.
• The study of projective-introjective-projective identification defense structures when taking up leadership and exercising authority
• Basic assumption mentality (e.g. dependency, fight/flight, pairing) as it emerges live in groups.
• Boundary, authority, role and task (BART) as core lenses for thinking about behaviour in the system.
• Their own countertransference, fantasies and impulses as data about the organisational field.
• The institutional and social unconscious, accessed through associative work and the matrix.

By attending, you can:

• Use the temporary organisation to study behaviour in real time – your own and others’ – rather than only talking about it in theory.
• Studying projective-introjective-projective identification defense structures when taking up leadership and exercising authority
• Observe how authority, role, boundary and task are worked with (and defended against) in practice.
• Notice basic assumption dynamics (dependency, fight/flight, pairing, etc.) as they emerge and experience their impact on thinking and work.
• Practise using your feelings, impulses and fantasies as data from the system, not just as “personal reactions”.
• Take these experiential insights back into your consulting, coaching, OD or leadership work when working with teams, culture and change.

EVENT INFORMATION

• DATE: 28 & 29  August 2026
• LOCATION: Zoom Online
• CPD: 12 Clinical CEU, 2 Ethical

WORKSHOP FACILITATORS

• Dr Louise Tonelli

Dr Louise Tonelli is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology. As a registered HPCSA member she publishes in the field of Industrial and Organisational Psychology in national and international journals, book chapters in books and has presented papers both nationally and internationally at various conferences. The focus of her PhD was what transformation looks like in a system above and below the surface, uncovering the concept of transmogrification in systems. Her field of interests are Systems Psychodynamics, Group Relations Conferences, qualitative research methods, such as Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA), and Listening Posts (LP). Dr Tonelli supervises Industrial and Organisational Psychology interns, masters and doctoral students. Prof Aden-Paul Flotman is an Industrial Psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at the University of South Africa. His lecturing responsibilities include Change Dynamics, Organisational Development and Coaching Psychology. Aden-Paul has a keen interest in exploring inter-cultural dynamics from a systems psychodynamic stance, somatic intelligence, and emotional toxicity in organisations. The focus (thesis) of his PhD was “language use as manifestation of leadership anxiety dynamics”. He serves on the Editorial Boards of African Journal of Employee Relations and Frontiers in Psychology. Aden-Paul supervises interns as well as master’s and doctoral students. Dr Inette Anne Taylor completed a Masters’ thesis on Schizophrenic language at the former Rand Afrikaans University (now UJ) in 1984, registered as a Counselling Psychologist in 1985, and completed a PhD program at the University of the Orange Free State in 2001.

In 2013 she graduated from UNISA with a BA Visual Arts degree and in 2018she became a BCIA accredited Neurofeedback provider.Over her career she attended a vast number of professional training and accreditation courses in trauma intervention, hypnotherapy, psychological assessment techniques, psychotherapeutic interventions, couple counselling, neuropsychological assessment training, BWRT and others. She presented/co-presented on numerous occasions at psychological societies in South Africa and worked as Consultant in several Group Relations events (in-person and online since 2019). She has provided psychological services as an HPCSA accredited CPD provider in various capacities. Inette provides psychotherapy, company assessments, coaching, neurofeedback and other psychological services for companies, individual clients, work teams, and couples. Prof Michelle S. May is a professor at the department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at the University of South Africa (UNISA). She is the manager of the Consulting Psychology Doctoral Programme (IOP, UNISA). She is the co-ordinator of the research focus areas Systems psychodynamics and Socio–analytic Methods (IOP, UNISA). She has supervised several students in primarily qualitative research projects to successful completion of their masters’ and doctoral degrees.She is a registered clinical psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. She has been involved in consultancy through a psychodynamic frame since 1995. She was actively part of the management and development of the Institute for the Study of Leadership and Authority (ISLA) in South Africa. Michelle received extensive training in the field of group consultation, under which from ISLA and the Tavistock Institute (UK), and consulted in various programs of this nature – nationally and internationally. She has consulted to international Group Relations Conferences in Boston, Chicago and New York (AK Rice Institute), Netherlands and the Leicester Conference (Tavistock Institute, UK; 2016 and 2017). She has been part of the team who has designed and planned the Robben Island diversity experience (RIDE) and has taken up the role of director, director of the training group and associate director from 2000 until 2014. She has also been part of the Group Relations workshops at UNISA since 2000. For the last 20 years Michelle have also contributed to the field of diversity management in South Africa as lecturer, researcher and consultant in several organisations – her contributions have included publications in accredited journals, book chapters, as well as presentations at national and international conferences. She has chaired, consulted in, and designed many workshops in the areas of diversity management and leadership development for organisations in the public and private sector.