By Lawrence D. Blum, M.D.
Corporate and small business Chief Executives are accustomed to obtaining the best information, consultation, and help available for everything - except themselves. Yet it's lonely at the top. CEOs have innumerable problems to consider and decisions to make, but it can be difficult for them to candidly discuss their thoughts, concerns, and doubts with others. They may have little training to do this; they may hesitate to discuss their doubts with people who report to them; and they may be quite hesitant to talk with other CEOs, who may be, or talk with. The difficulties of the long-sought position and the struggles over making decisions can themselves be difficult to acknowledge.
Most models of decision-making are based on rational calculations, e.g., given certain assumptions, what is the expected rate of return on an investment? The model is fine, except that so many assumptions are just that - assumptions, inevitably made with inadequate information and colored by unrecognized wishes and fears. Projections are often unrealistically rosy or grim - they are made by humans, and since when are people rational? Economists have recently begun to win important prizes for recognizing that people, consumers for example, don't make decisions on a rational basis. This realization is no surprise to those familiar with psychoanalysis, our most thorough method of studying the irrational mind.
So what is the rational businessperson to do? Knowledge really is power, so the task is to expand the realm of what one knows to include the irrational ways in which humans work. How a CEO functions affects his own company, at times even a large industry, and how he (or she) functions is heavily influenced by his own competitiveness, anxiety, envy, eagerness or fear to exert authority, wishes to have his employees love him or fear him, etc. The CEO in the most advantageous position will know his business, industry, and economics, but will also know something of his own mind. Yet in our rationalist society, few CEOs take the opportunity to pursue this advantage.
In recent decades executives and businesses have turned to management consulting and sometimes to coaching and various types of psychological advice-giving. These methods can be helpful, but it's rare that they truly address the irrational, emotional struggles that affect us all, nor do they sort out the complex dynamics of succession that can occur in a family business. To change ingrained, repeated patterns of behavior requires more inquiry and specific, personal understanding, and there appears now to be a trend in this direction.
The CEO of Novartis, Daniel Vasella, attributes much of his success to a personal psychoanalysis. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the Yale School of Management, has cited the work of psychoanalysts in his studies of CEOs. An esteemed group of members of the American Psychoanalytic Association have for years been leaders in studying organizations and providing psychological consultations to business. In our region, several of my colleagues at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia offer consulting services to executives and small businesses and have recently formed groups to further this pursuit. Businesspersons who have come to see me for personal reasons have often become much more able executives and administrators, helping their companies greatly. In economic terms, the return on investment can be high. In personal terms, they become more content and comfortable with themselves, improve their relationships with other people, and often find that it may not be so lonely at the top after all.
