Todd: I am thinking about the genesis of Pathwise. Why did we start it? What is it? You know beyond the generic marketing “management training” etc?
Chad: I was a manager in business for several years and I started to get the inkling that something more was going on with people, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t really understand it. I wanted to understand so I studied psychology and I quickly learned that even mainstream psychology didn’t help me understand expect how to put people in boxes. I found analytical psychology and what I found were these tools for understanding behavior. When I learned these tools it was like putting on polarized glasses. I began to see the fish beneath the glare on the surface of the water. I found that these tools were largely unknown in business and yet I found them to invaluable in all aspects of managing people, hiring, and selling. The idea for Pathwise is to share these tools in a way that people can really retain and utilize them.
Todd: I feel right now the pressure to act as if I know why I started Pathwise, and if I’m honest I know that there’s a reason, and I was pulled that reason. But I don’t know really why. So if I try right now to use these tools in front of this question, one thing I see is that there is the possibility, in the way that everyone feels that our lives, our work can get better, that there are obstacles that we don’t see. Again unclear, another aspect that there is an adventure to learning these ideas, and finally that I’ve seen the power of these ideas to transform relationships. So I have to start in the place of unknowing any answer to why we started Pathwise. This is unheard of.
Chad: Why do think these tools aren’t already being used in business? Or are they being used but just not under the label of analytical psychology?
Todd: I don’t know.
Chad: Yes I understand the position of not knowing as a way to begin to understand a bigger question, such was “what motivates me” or “what do I love to do?”; but your response seems a bit esoteric and perhaps even lazy. We are training manager here, not…
Todd: OK I will give you an answer. Psychoanalytics knew they had a good thing and wanted to keep it to themselves, and historically business managers wanted to learn how to survive today and not how they are creating the obstacles of tomorrow. There are pockets of communities, and certain individuals who apply these tools naturally.
Chad: So it sounds like there is a schism between business people and psychoanalysts. I learned from studying Jung that he was distrustful of organizations and business. So many of the psychologists I studied with thought business people to be just greedy and short-sided, and so many of the business people think psychologists to be either too academic or impractical. Or they misunderstand psychology based on television notions of it.
Todd: To be honest I see the reflection of the schism in this discussion, so perhaps a better way of approach why we started pathwise would be to approach why we want to bridge this casm now. I want to because it feels important. Analytical psychology is dying in its isolation and business is primed for gaining another tool to live management as a calling. There is no position of greater possibility within society to make America more effective and for the good.
Chad: What do you mean by management as a calling?
Todd: Again it’s related to why we started Pathwise.
Chad: When I first aspired to be a manager I was attracted to greater power and the money that went with it. But I was much younger. I see know that this is perfectly understandable given my age. It is natural for a young man to be interested in power and money. But I got, as I have matured, my motivations have changed. I have found that the greatest gain I experience is when I understand and act in a way that helps people and makes them be more affective. You could say that success follows this. My definition of success hasn’t changed, but it has included more.
Todd: I agree. That is why I think we started Pathwise.
Chad: Yes, me to. To give managers a place to understand and explore the greater meaning of success. If I play the game only to win I get one result. Often, short of what I really want. If I play the game with a certain understanding of others I get another result. This is often more than what I wanted.
Dialogue on Suspension & Transference: November 25, 2007
Chad: I met my friend Steve recently whom I haven’t seen for five years. Over the past five years I have been learning and thinking about psychology, and I kind of had these ideas that Steve was shallow and didn’t understand what I have learned. I spent a lot of time with Steve and even traveled Europe with him so I could say that I really know him. But when I met him the other day it was as if I was talking to a different person. On one I experience very quickly that he had an amazing intuition that I was envious of. I also experienced a couple of points where he was talking to me in a strange way, trying to prove something to me, as if I were his father. When I asked myself why I was seeing this different man before me, I wondered if it might be that he’d changed. But when I asked my fried about this, he said that this is the way Steve has always been. The difference was that I learned something in my study of psychology, something that helped me see more of Steve than what my earlier perception was capable of.
Todd: I’d like to know a little bit more about what you meant by, he sounded different? Did his voice sound different, or was it just that he was saying things different than what you were used to. For me I’ve notice that these go together--that by paying attention, I can hear these different perspectives than others. For me one of the most remarkable moments came when I began to clearly see this in other people. I think some of it came from my training, but more so it came from really beginning to care about the person sitting in front of me. It was as if I began to see people for the first time.
Chad: Yes, this idea of caring about someone, the person sitting in front of me, seems a part of my experience. It is as if I am sitting there and I am open to something more than my preconceived notions of the person. But, as I think about the difference between now and before and see no small part of person that I did not in past years, the thing that occurred in the middle was my training. In particular, my training in analytica psychology. Im not sure wether the training that I hav had has added completelynew skills or wether it has just unearthed some intuitve skills that I already posseseeesd and was a part of my instinct or capability.
Todd: For me I’m not sure I value the seeing or the person themselves more, and I’m not sure whether I sought training to be able to analyze situations or because I wanted to be better with people in situations, but I found them to be completely complimentary. For example even the idea of transference, that I repeat the same patterns over and over again helps me to completely understand that others do this, and that its sad for all of us that this is so.
Chad: I do not know if it is sad, it is just a survival part of ourselves. It is like an organ. In childhood I had a certain experience that if I went this way it is dangerous and so now the pattern I repeat is that I don’t go that way. It is natural. But, if I see this pattern now, become conscious of it I can see if it ishelping me or impeding my interactions with other people. Or, both. For example, when I was young I got what I wanted when I asked my dad for his advice. And today I see that I use this. Particularly with older men in business. I have only recently become conscious of this. But, I see that it has some positive and some negative effects. But to see it brings me back to what you said. I had to be open to myself like you described being open to another person--too be ok with seeing that this is my pattern.
Todd: From your analytic training, what do you do to see?
Chad: I know now that these patterns are occurring all of the time. And so, I watch. It is as if I step back sometimes, from my usual reactions, and try to see if there is a pattern. I know not to look to intensly, but with a relaxed gaze. I remember when I was a kid that there were these art prints that were popular and what you saw was a pattern across this whole print, different colors and with no form that was discernable. But, your friend would say that the star track enterprise was in the picture. So, I would relax my eyes and there it was. But the harder I looked and the more intenser I looked I could not see it. That was the trick.
Todd: What do they call that in analytic psychology and does it apply to working with people at work?
Chad: I may sound a bit angry as I say this, but the idea that somehow that peoples patterns, that my patterns, are somehow different at work, is like saying that people who love all you can eat meat pizzas are somehow vegetarians when they walk in the door to work. Humans are humans. We all have a psyche. This is what we have learned from analytical psychology. This way of seeing patterns is called the observing ego. There is your id that wants to eat, the super ego that is telling you that you eat to much when you eat pizza and that you should be a vegetarian, but Freud and Jung and others found that there is the ability to see these other parts of ourselves while they are in action.
Todd: Like you saw that you are angry? And how does seeing this help?
Chad: If I did not see it I would have sounded angry anyway. There is probably some truth behind the anger, but this has a natural limit and if I did not know that this was going on it would have gone out of control. I would not have done anything. I have a complex around… and I know that this affect me in my work. So I see it more and when I am not trying to prove something to people they are more receptive. I am as a result more effective with the people for whom my interactions depend.
Todd: What I saw is that you included more both the anger and the patterns, and the patience to express well what you needed to say. I think this is the best part about seeing our patterns and transferences. We can include more and I believe its as much our effort to included more of ourselves as we communicate that helps them as it is what we say. I know you were being honest and I was willing to try harder to listen. I believe this is what is required of us by those who we manage.
Chad: I see what you mean, If I am us. If I am a manager and I know that my pattern is to sometimes be perfectonistic and condescending to my employees, you know because my father was the same way to me, then I don’t rationalize my behavior. More importantly I can even act condescendingly to my people, but if they know that I know this about myself, then it already takes the negative force out of it.