Through vignettes and case studies, this work demonstrates how brutal business practices have become. It shows the importance of psychodynamic mechanisms (especially counter-transference) in understanding and healing dysfunctional business, medical, and educational organizations

1. Introduction to Applied Poetry and Storytelling 2. Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theories 3. Leaders in the Workplace 4. Downsizing the Workplace 5. Alienation and Bureaucracy at Work 6. Loss of Self: Disappearance into Anonymity 7. Conflict at Work 8. Life at Work in Hospitals and Clinics:...

"Understanding experience at work, especially in toxic organizations, is a multidimensional undertaking that must include all senses. The use of applied poetry has its primary value as an evocative approach to sensing, knowing, and understanding workplace experience. Poetry at its best condenses...

"This book explores the dark, dysfunctional nature of organization and the experience of working in them. The authors offer dozens of stories of workplace dysfunction and use a psychoanalytically informed perspective to help readers understand why a leader, colleague, or friend behaves in ways...