September 06, 2020

Episode 064: From Martin Luther King to Wall Street: Transitions In the Life of a Psychoanalyst: An Interview with Kathleen Pogue White Ph.D. (New York)

41 minutes

“They changed my analysis, it went from ‘I’m not actually a patient I’m just a lump here, reporting’, to being a patient. I didn’t understand the work until after that conference at the Tavistock... It’s like I could take advantage of the opportunity I was having to speed along. My analyst wrote a paper with two other analysts about their experience of working with three men of color during the Martin Luther King Funeral.”

Description: Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Kathleen Pogue White. She is the Principal of Pogue White Consultancy, LLC, and a psychoanalyst who applies the profession's core knowledge and skills in her multi-sectored work in organizational consulting, executive coaching, and leadership development. Her organizational development work is carried out in teams designed to focus on balancing the dynamics experienced in the workplace with awareness and understanding in order to achieve individual, team, and business objectives. Dr. White’s practice is based in New York.

Recently, Dr. White’s consulting career has focused on executive coaching, particularly executive role transitions in several organizations. In this conversation, Dr. White shares her unique approach to diversity and racism and how she goes back and forth from a psychoanalytic frame to a consulting one in her work with organizations.

Key takeaways:

[4:54] Dr. White talks about how she became interested in psychoanalysis.

[8:58] Dr. White’s introduction to psychoanalysis was by going into treatment.

[9:54] Psychoanalysis as protection.

[10:30] Dr. White shares how she wrote the paper Applying Learning from Experience.

[14:44] The question: “Who do you think you are?” led Dr. White to a major realization on how much privilege she actually had.

[20:03] Dr. White realized she was not making any contribution, but just going along with the flow.

[20:45] Realizing she was a natural for consultation work.

[23:47] Changing from an analytic to a consulting frame and then back to an analytic one.

[27:18] When an analyst sees people at work, a lot more is revealed in comparison to what can be seen on the couch.

[30:02] Dr. White talks about her work Surviving Hating and Being Hated.

[30:58] Dr. White talks about the Black Panthers movement.

[32:56] There is a tendency to support the white status quo.

[35:18] Dr. White talks about her current work in the area of diversity and race.

[38:55] Dr. White engages in conversations with people running organizations and helping them realize the social accountability that exists with regards to how people are treated.

[39:20] Dr. White shares her thoughts about the specific contribution of psychoanalysis to the problem of racism in organizations.

Mentioned in this episode :

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org