The Blind Side of Management

Abstract

From the perspective of Depth Psychology, each of us to some degree suffers neurotic complexes of inferiority, superiority, and blind spots in our internal and external awareness. Hence, managing any organization requires managing oneself, or at least understanding the psychological processes involve. As demonstrated throughout this study, not only our inherent functional (neurophysiological) blindness but the acquired blindnesses of hubris, bias, exclusionary modes of perception, and fixed formulae of operation and administration affect our clarity of thought, the lucidity of our decision-making. And perhaps more so for leaders and managers vested in performance and profit: their capacities to listen, learn, interact, implement, recognize and pursue opportunities, recognize and address errors, are materially and decisively affected by the one-sided agenda of business. As argued throughout this study, a central dilemma of economic success entails our overtraining in supposedly objective and obsessively quantitative rational thinking, and our undertraining in purportedly subjective and typically derided emotional qualitative thinking.