A Coach or A Couch? A Lacanian Perspective On Executive Coaching and Consulting Gilles Arnaud

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Human Relations
DOI: 10.1177/0018726703569005
2003; 56; 1131 Human Relations
Gilles Arnaud
Consulting
A Coach or a Couch? A Lacanian Perspective on Executive Coaching and
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A coach or a couch? A Lacanian
perspective on executive coaching and
consulting
Gilles Arnaud
ABSTRACT At a time when competition in the workplace isbecoming more and
more individual, ruthlessand widespread, managersare in turn being
solicited more personally. That iswhy the market for psychologically
oriented executive coaching isexploding nowadays. Thisarticle aims
at extracting the main teachingsof thischange in perspective, in order
to pave the way for a methodology of psychoanalytic coaching, that is
directly inspired by the work of JacquesLacan. The objective of this
exploratory form of mentorship isto satisfy the explicit needsof the
clients, along with their relational expectations and unconscious
desires.
K EY WORDS executive coaching
Lacanian theory
management
psychoanalysis
The emergence of a psychoanalytical approach to executive
coaching
It now seems quite commonplace for companies to offer managerial staff
who are experiencing some type of career transition or displaying poor
performance or job dissatisfaction the individualized counseling service
known as executive coaching.
1
And yet, however widespread executive
coaching would seem to have become, it nevertheless conjures up images that
can legitimately inspire some reticence. After all, what does the entrepre-
neurial language in vogue today convey through its references to coaching
1131
Human Relations
[0018-7267(200309)56:9]
Volume 56(9): 11311154: 039185
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The Tavistock Institute
SAGE Publications
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93S 05arnaud (ds) 28/10/03 10:44 am Page 1131
and coaches if not the imagery of sports competition so cherished by
management gurus (Berglas, 2002)? As such, the use of this terminology in
the eld of professional training can hardly be considered as neutral. The
stereotypical image of the world-class athlete in training immediately comes
to mind (Whitmore, 1994). Such an association not only atters the ego of
high-level managers/clients, it also gives a narcissistic boost to the
coaches/trainers who supposedly dedicate body and soul to their noble and
altruistic mission of making a success of their protgs.
As nave and excessive as such associations may seem, they are no less
a reminder of certain very real managerial practices of just a few years ago,
which Amado and Deumie (1991) qualied at the time as magical and regres-
sive. This was the period, still in recent memory, of bungie cord jumping or
outdoor retreats (rafting, canyoning, etc.), even survival tests, for executives
mobilized on corporate projects during the mutations of the 1980s. Since
then, the context has changed. The dynamic of collective involvement and
of exceeding ones limits in extraordinary circumstances that was put in play
by such extreme experiences has become less marked. What remains of the
sports metaphor is the competitive dimension, which is, in fact, more bitter,
individualistic and prevalent in the workplace now than ever before. Bound
by the cult of performance, managers are, indeed, increasingly taxed on a
personal level (Higy-Lang & Gellman, 2002; Leleu, 1995; Moyson, 2001):
they must cope with complexity, uncertainty and paradox, take risks in emer-
gencies, manage stress and develop capacities of autonomy and initiative as
well as new skills to boost their employability.
In view of such high stakes, there has been a growing awareness of
the need for managers to have personalized counseling, both on the part
of those most directly concerned, especially in sales and managerial areas
(Bernole, 1997; Debordes, 1996), and on the part of the heads of organiz-
ations and top executives who are responsible for organizing such inter-
ventions for their managerial staff or for themselves (Caby, 2002; Chavel,
2001; Cohen & Piazzini, 1996). This explains the development, over the
past few years, of coaching practices whose psychological dimension is
regularly reconfirmed,
2
such that executive coaching devices now show a
greater psychologization of their methods (Albert & Emery, 2001; Nichol-
son, 2000), which range from post-Rogerian techniques to clinical
approaches (Poirier & Gagn, 1996). One even speaks of psychoanalyti-
cally inspired executive coaching, henceforth diametrically opposed to any
reference to sport (Arnaud, 1999; Huggler, 1997). For example, certain
American corporations, such as Time Warner, AT&T, Levi Strauss, IBM,
General Motors or Phillip Morris, now send managers showing psycho-
logical strain to see a psychoanalyst at the companys expense, with the
Human Relations 56(9) 1132
aim of increasing organizational efficiency (Wareham, 1998; Wiesendan-
ger, 1995).
Certainly, a sort of analogy does seem to hold between executive
coaching and psychoanalysis. That is to say, isnt the person seeking out a
coach asking in much the same way as the person seeking a psychoana-
lyst to be listened to and helped to understand whats wrong with him
or her, with the aim of resolving, as far as possible, his or her problems
(so as to become autonomous)? Yet, the emergence of a coaching qualified
as psychoanalytically inspired is likely to alarm some psychoanalytical
purists who denounce coaching as a kind of catch-all concept, covering
whatever you want to put under it.
3
It is true that there is a great diversity
in practical methods: the duration of the coaching relationship overall is
highly variable (from a half-day to several years); session lengths differ, as
do the locations (inside or outside the company); and a variety of
approaches (counseling, mentoring, tutoring, psychotherapy, etc.) and
techniques (roleplays, video, direct supervision, etc.) are employed. More
importantly, however, the term coaching covers a whole host of sundry
notions (transactional analysis, assertiveness, neurolinguistic program-
ming, etc.) (Stacke, 2000), amongst which one now even finds a new style
of management in which every executive is supposed to be trained with
the aim of becoming the coach of his or her own team in turn (Gautier &
Vervisch, 2000; Noy, 2002).
Nevertheless, some good can be said. At the very least, the term
coaching has the (considerable) merit of being referenced in the codes of
corporate culture as well as being current lingo in company management,
while psychoanalysis still has an image akin to that of an awkward gate-
crasher. Coaching has, moreover, been a catchphrase now for several years.
Its use has literally exploded in the United States (Bolch, 2001; Hall et al.,
1999), where it has become the fastest-growing type of consulting.
4
Further,
it is estimated that there are more than 15,000 full- or part-time practitioners
world-wide according to the International Coaching Federation, which itself
boasts, after some ve years of existence, 3500 members of vastly different
proles (psychotherapists, former athletes, lawyers, business academics and
management consultants), who work either freelance or for boutique
consultancies, offshoots of larger consultancies, and training organizations
(Berglas, 2002; Downey, 2002; Greco, 2001).
While coaching remains a polysemous notion, the question may well
be asked if it might not also potentially serve, for this very reason, as a Trojan
Horse for psychoanalysis. This is the perspective within which, as a
researcher and practicing executive coaching psycho-sociologist, we would
like to suggest here a few theoretical and methodological pointers for an
Arnaud A coach or a couch? 1133
eventual practice of psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching that is
directly inspired by the work of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Assumptions about psychoanalytic coaching
To witness how some, more or less hard-line, psychoanalysts have latched
onto the concept of coaching recently in France (Forrestier, 1997), one
cannot help wondering just what role nancial interests have in their motives.
Certainly, word has it that classic therapy is not the success it once was.
Rumor or established fact? While socio-economic studies in the analytical
eld are admittedly uncommon, those that we know of (see Friedman, 1991)
tend to conrm this idea, as do the complaints that weve been privy to here
and there by peers in the profession. This context would therefore justify
adopting a strategy to diversify the offer in analysis, by rmly endeavoring
to appeal to a professional population composed of company heads or top
executives solvent clients, in sum who, while they are certainly reticent
to come to the couch, are nevertheless potentially interested . . ..
Given this, the notion of psychoanalytically inspired coaching for
managers seems to arise naturally (Brunner, 1996; I.P.M., 1996), as this
practice can appear more familiar and reassuring than the classic therapy.
Managers believe that they are simply being invited to come and discuss their
work, rather than their inner self (in order, for example, to better position
themselves in respect of communication problems or in the exercise of power;
to explore their professional objectives; to get a project off the ground; to
make certain decisions; etc.). The qualication as psychoanalytical,
moreover, endows the practice with a certain respectability, scrupulousness
and social standing at the same time.
That admitted, however, it is not easy to say whether an effective
demand can be identied for the product derived from therapy that is psycho-
analytically inspired executive coaching. Yet there is undoubtedly a need, in
the marketing sense of the term, to which this new concept should success-
fully be able to respond: the need to create a space in the working world for
the subject and his or her words. Certain work psychologists, like Revuz
(1994), express the issue at stake here in no uncertain terms: is there a place
where individuals can try and symbolically elaborate, with their own signi-
ers, their singular inscription as subjects in their professional activity and
workplace, even though management intervenes precisely in the eld of
language and speech, where subjectivation operates?
It would certainly be a reasonable response to point out that organiz-
ations often have a multitude of groups (relating to various afliations:
operational, hierarchical, categorical, geographical, etc.) in which personnel
can express themselves. Yet such groups produce essentially plural utterances
or, in other words, collective discourse about progress, quality, etc. and
not individual utterances emanating from subjects in the group. Common,
collective or social discourse (it matters little how it is qualied here) is
linguistically constructed in a manner radically different from that of the
subject, who is cleaved and governed by the logic of the unconscious. As the
psychoanalyst Serge Leclaire (1997) has observed, all discourse of the we
is an ideological one, in the sense that it acts as a link (logic of the smallest
common denominator and consensual fusion) and that, structurally, it leaves
no room for otherness in the sense of the internal division of the unconscious
as radically other (whence this discourses necessarily paradoxical effect on
the subjects involved, who may, for example, react by asserting at all costs
their singularity be this by evincing a refusal of any form of dependence).
Here, psychoanalytically inspired executive coaching could intervene
successfully to the extent that it essentially consists in providing an appro-
priate framework for receiving the remonstrations of the desiring subject
(Leclaire, 1998: 230) (insofar as the subject precisely poses the question of
his or her desire), without reducing the polyvalence of this discourse, as is
inexorably the case with group expression, nor dismissing the eld of
professional ideals as irrelevant from the point of view of the operational
stakes (namely, the resolution of management problems), as does classic
analytical therapy (Bertrand & Doray, 1989; Dejours, 2000; Gaignard,
2001).
Additionally, from the psychological perspective of the psychoanalyst
involved, such a framework plays the role of guarding against anxiety. By
practicing psychoanalytically inspired executive coaching which can readily
be compared to what takes place on the couch since it takes place in private
and in the imaginary register of the duo (Lacan, 2001 [1958]: 167) analysts
should in fact be able to approach managers, while carefully avoiding having
to invent a completely new praxis. In this respect, the framework of psycho-
analytically inspired coaching could be seen to constitute a bridge between
the couch and on-site intervention, or even a transitional space, valid as much
for managers in their approach to psychoanalysis as for psychoanalysts in
their involvement relative to the company.
Executive coaching as the ip side of psychoanalysis
In the literature on executive coaching in the conventional sense of the term,
the comparison with analytical praxis usually appears quickly enough, be it
in the form of a denegation (executive coaches have a very different
approach to people than psychoanalysts do or lets not even mention
psychoanalyzing managers in executive coaching) (Albert & Emery, 1999;
Cruellas, 1993). At any rate, beyond certain formal similitudes which have
essentially already been stated (two people, one of the two in the position of
knower, etc.), there are some fundamental oppositions, which we will begin
by making explicit before considering a possible denition of psychoana-
lytically inspired executive coaching.
First of all, one should point out that executive coaching traditionally
operates on the specic relationship that managers have with the professional
reality (which is mainly a human reality, comprised of colleagues, teams,
hierarchy, management, etc.) with which they are confronted in an economy
of ends of doing and getting done (this is the art of management). That is
to say, it is essentially a matter of developing practices aimed at helping
clients modify their action (coordination, control, social regulation, etc.) in
order to render it more effective and more satisfying. Therefore, executive
coaching clearly has the objective of facilitating managers contented adap-
tation to the economic world (Lenhardt, 1991). In this, while it, of course,
necessarily includes a diagnostic orientation, it nevertheless leans more, in
our opinion, towards a consulting centered mainly upon attitudinal or behav-
ioral changes (so that clients feel better in their role as decision-makers, for
example); cognitive training (particularly to help clarify objectives); and the
elaboration of different actors strategies (to facilitate communication with
collaborators, etc.).
Psychoanalysis for its part changes nothing of reality, but everything
for the subject. It simply allows the subject to better orientate him/herself in
his or her own real and to learn to live with the surprises of the uncon-
scious. It therefore has no orthopedic end (Lacan, 1966). From certain
angles, psychoanalysis would even appear to be terribly subversive, not only
for the subject, but also for human communities, insofar as it reveals the
necessary underlying ignorance on which rests the social or institutional
bond. In addition, it is essential to recall that, during treatment, it is always
up to the subject himself/herself to do the work of undoing the psychic
conicts hindering him or her. It is for this reason that the analysts praxis
articulates itself around listening (which as such is attentive to a discourse
that far exceeds the intentions of the analysand) and eludes all incursion from
a more prescriptive angle (above all, give no advice).
Moreover, the concept of action that underlies the exercise of
traditional executive coaching cannot be assimilated to the vision that
emerges from psychoanalytical texts on this subject. The search in the latter
for a theory of action would be in vain, especially in Freud. It is more a
question of acts, which, from a psychoanalytical point of view, is completely
different. As it is currently practised, executive coaching assumes the
predominance, in the client (as well as the coach), of an agency of action,
the Ego, which exercises its sovereignty in the domain of reality. It is even
the possible reform of this psychic agency that is cited as legitimating the
meeting between coach and manager, which is thereby construed as enabling
the latter to give the best of himself/herself. Managerial action is therefore
seen as the product of a conscious intention, adapted to specic ends, and
as the mark of an autonomy under constraint. Psychoanalysis, for its part,
deliberately forgets the ow of action, in favor of discontinuous acts (actings-
out) through which the subject-manager practices the real of his or her
internal division
5
(for repression institutes human beings as split from them-
selves). Such acts can take the form, for example, of aberrant strategic
decisions by a manager convinced of running the leading company in its
sector, even though this is not the case: certainly, such a perception is false
on the level of objective reality but it nevertheless corresponds to the truth
of the managers desire and, as a result, constitutes what can be construed
as his or her real. As a result, an act can only be the expression of a desire
and fundamentally inadapted to rational objectives. It reveals the funda-
mental dependence of the subject relative to another scene (Freud) that
of the unconscious.
To put it another way, the horizon of executive coaching is rather one
of a pragmatics of the Ego, which can in theory rene or enrich its operat-
ing patterns (to make up for its shortcomings, etc.). In this perspective, any
eventual resurgence of the unconscious can only be assimilated to a failure,
which one must learn to better master. For psychoanalysis, however, the
perspective changes radically. One cannot say that the Ego acts but, rather,
that it precariously strives to transform a portion of the Id and to inscribe
an advance of reality (sublimation), while the unconscious intention remains
the real of the act (Assoun, 1985). That is why an eventual managerial
dysfunctioning (when a manager is unable to delegate, for example) is unable
to be simply assimilated to a failure, to the extent that it is, in fact, perfectly
functional, though elsewhere (on the unconscious scene of the subject who,
in this particular case, does not want to share any of his or her power). In
such a case, a Lacanian approach to the problem which considers the
workings of the unconscious as structured like a language would consist
in liberating the act from certain repetitive compulsions by undoing the nodes
of signication which psychically bind the subject, so that drive cathexes are
rendered more exible. If there is action, it is in all cases referred to the realm
of the symptom.
As regards the symptom, executive coaching tends rather to think in
terms of an array of pathological signs. This is why an executive coach, like
a doctor, is led to draw up a list of various symptoms, each of which has a
specic meaning (deciency, cognitive limitation, etc.) and a treatment
adapted to it (resolution of the problem). In contrast, Lacan insistently
reminds us that psychoanalysis can only be conceived of as a clinic of the
symptom, with this notably having the value of signication or of truth being
uttered (Matet, 1987). This signication is none other than phallic signica-
tion, insofar as what the symptom comes to signify is desire (in the form of
a resurfacing of the repressed).
6
Finally, it would seem that traditional executive coaching, insofar as it
is oriented towards management under the constraint of always obtaining
more satisfying results (performance dictatorship), tends to reinforce the
propensity of clients to situate themselves in the register Lacan calls jouis-
sance,
7
where one once again nds the sports images of coaching, given that
the coach must help his or her clients constantly exceed their limits. Clearly,
jouissance, in the psychoanalytical sense, has nothing to do with pleasure
(which connotes enjoyable rest, relaxation, etc.). There is jouissance when
ones limits are put to the test. It is an unconscious manifestation that
augments the degree of tension more than it releases it. J ouissance namely
concerns acting out (in its psychoanalytical denition) and all action that
goes beyond ourselves, whether potentially destructive (certain athletes
narrowly escape death or certain managers bankruptcy, due to risk-taking,
for example) or creative (innovation, invention, development, etc.). In this
perspective, executive coaching can operate like an impetus to jouissancefor
the manager.
J ouissance, it has been understood, takes no notice of words and
thought, but expresses itself only in action which is why it is diametrically
opposed to analysis. Whats more, we can go further and, in the light of
certain propositions put forward by the psychoanalyst Jean-Daniel Nasio
(1992), ask whether the manager involved in a headlong pursuit of excel-
lence is not unconsciously looking for the jouissanceof the Other (Lacan,
1972: 39; Lacan, 1966, 81920) that of the Company or perhaps the
Market (after Mother, God or the subject himself/herself in a fantasy of
omnipotence)? This would seem to be the lure supported by managerial
ideology (it is possible to achieve a perfect managerial experience) and
eventually taken on by executive coaching. However, psychoanalysis indi-
cates to us that there is no Other to give jouissanceto, in the sense that the
Other does not exist as a substantial entity (but only a network of signiers)
and that this absolute jouissancein question is impossible to realize by the
subject. Human beings, and therefore managers, necessarily encounter all
sorts of obstacles represented by language and signiers (which block access
to jouissance or the full realization of desire inasmuch as they mediate it).
Having understood that, all that is left to do is to make do with the lack.
In these conditions, can psychoanalytically inspired executive coaching
be anything other than a simple alliance of words? A contradiction in terms?
A heresy? A dupery? A misleading advertisement? So many foils invite us to
meticulously dene the framework of this practice.
How should the psychoanalytic coach be labeled?
In turning rst of all to the coachs prole and eld of intervention in the
framework of psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching, we are
confronted with a number of questions of propriety in the two senses of
the word: both the sense of what is proper to the profession (and how then
it should label itself) and that of deontology. Can psychoanalytic coaches,
for example, safely intrude on the territory of traditional executive coaches,
draw inspiration from their way of acting and target the same objects, even
if they do so using their own methods? And if they must break with existing
practices, at what level is the rupture to be located? Such questions necessi-
tate a closer look at different notions of management and their repercussions
on executive coaching.
8
According to the rst denition, which we believe to be the most widely
accepted one, management corresponds to the exercise of operational skills
that are acquired from the outside and generally assimilated to a whole set
of relevant ways of behaving, in the behaviorist sense of the term. If by
chance, the manager does not possess these skills from the outset, she or he
inevitably encounters difculties of differing degrees in her or his daily
professional activities (ineffectiveness, wasted time, frictions with colleagues,
etc.). As such, difculties are an indicator of deciencies, and it becomes
appropriate to correct them through training, and even by applying certain
formulaic management methods. Executive coaches are likely to hold the key
to such solutions, on the condition that they are clearly referenced as a
subject supposed to know what to do, or, even better, supposed to know
how to do it (in the area of management). Therefore, they are essentially
management consultants, who hold the position of experts and perhaps even
that of experienced practitioners, having exercised various managerial roles.
Their mission consists in bringing and transferring their own knowledge and
skills to the client, with appropriate educational methods (they are to train
the client), discretion (they must be able to adapt managerial techniques to
situations encountered) and a spirit of dedramatization (they are to reassure
and assist the manager). However, this type of executive coaching can only
work if there has been a correct diagnosis of the formative deciency. If the
causes of a clients difculties lie elsewhere (mental blocks, for example),
there is a great risk of seeing the problem shift during training, since the latter
will only be treating the consequences of the underlying phenomenon
(Berglas, 2002; Kets de Vries, 2002).
In another, still very prevalent, meaning, the exercise of management
depends more on inner characteristics of the individual. Here it is no longer
only a matter of behavior or an object of training, but also of attitude. What
is involved in this case is the personal dimension of management: the
manager invests his or her personality and is his or her own very instrument
(he or she must be able to take hard blows, inspire enthusiasm by his or her
energy and charisma, etc.). Sometimes, however, the psychological mechan-
ics seize up or get out of control, and managerial errors occur. These can be
linked, for example, to insufcient emotional control on the part of a
manager: he or she loses it, ies off the handle, letting his or her emotions
get the upper hand; can no longer communicate; feels stressed, anxious,
alone; is no longer able to evaluate how to make the right decisions; and so
on. In a conguration of this type, the executive coachs goal is to help the
client to better adapt to the work environment and to develop self-control:
in short, to reinforce the Ego. As an example, Sankowsky (1995) points out
the possibility of teaching a manager not to abuse a position of power relative
to subordinates by instructing him or her in techniques normally used by
certain psychotherapists (how to manage counter-transference, for example).
Other executive coaching practices also highlight the necessity for the client
to regain self-condence (be this against a backdrop of the fear of others)
(ONeill, 2000).
The second of the two proles we have just drawn is easily recogniz-
able as that of the coach-psychologist, who is supposed be knowledgeable
about clients characterology and personality traits, as well as personal
development methods. Indeed, prescriptions and advice will only be well
received by clients and integrated into the latters system of representations
and conduct, to the extent that the coach is attributed a status of subject
supposed to know (in the strictly Lacanian sense of the term).
9
In other
words, manager-clients must believe the executive coach holds knowledge
about them knowledge exceeding their own in any case and that he or
she, consequently, has the ability to make them evolve. The lever of this evol-
ution thus consists in a transferential relationship (in the psychoanalytical
sense of the term), which is made use of by the coach in order to make clients
progress in a direction judged pertinent (well being, accomplishment, etc.).
This, of course, raises an entire host of ethical problems, for who, indeed,
can say what will be good for the subject?
That being the case, in what way does the psychoanalytic coach differ
from the prole types identied above? Personally, we would give a two-
pronged response, for the psychoanalytic coach is set apart not only by his
or her capacity to act on the two traditional levels of executive coaching we
have outlined (even though such action takes a different form to that of the
technician coach or psychologist), but also, by focusing on a third level of
practice, which clearly marks an analytical positioning and retroactively
justies intervention on the two levels just mentioned. In terms of the
Lacanian triptych need-demand-desire (Arnaud, 1998), we would suggest
that the level of (managerial) need corresponds to the rst type of executive
coaching discussed above, i.e. technical coaching; the level of demand (for
treatment and help) to the coaching oriented towards support or personal
development; and the level of desire (of the professional or social subject) to
psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching.
10
That said, rather than
develop this interpretative schema as such, we would like to take up here one
of its corollaries and inquire into the different meanings taken on by the
symptom (dysfunction, conict, management error, etc.) when it is question,
respectively, of need, demand or desire.
The hypothesis to be developed can be stated as follows. Within the
framework of technical coaching, the symptom is no more than an opera-
tional problem that is a source of relative destabilization for the manager. It
only has meaning unto itself: it is either present or absent, and as such it is
the mark of a deciency or need. The clients questioning will in this case be
of the type: Tell me how to resolve this problem. In support or personal
development coaching, the symptom has the value of a sign, which means
according to Peirces denition that it has a meaning (and therefore
represents something) for someone, in this case the coach who is supposed
to know. Hence the demand formulated by the client: Tell me what this
means about me. In psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching however,
the symptom can never mean anything taken by itself in isolation, but is rst
and foremost a signier referring to other signiers (words, symptoms, etc.),
which drain the subjects desire (see the notion of signifying chain, Lacan,
1966; Leclaire, 1968).
The positioning of psychoanalytic coaching relative to
traditional coaching
Let us rst consider the question of whether the psychoanalytic executive
coach can act as a management expert or consultant. We would answer this
question in the afrmative, but only on the condition that this specialization
on the coachs part predominantly serves as a safety net for the manager-
client, in much the same way, for example, as does the double qualication
of psychoanalyst and doctor relative to patients developing worrying soma-
tizations. The psychoanalytic executive coach must clearly not be limited to
this operational role of consultant, but such a skill reassures the client and,
in practice, allows the latter to quickly get rid of benign management
problems (those which are a matter of technical inadequacy). As a coach, we
have ourselves often begun phases of individualized treatment of manager-
clients by focusing specically on concrete problems (how to run a meeting,
for example). Such a procedure has the added advantage of rendering it
impossible for the client to use the excuse that the coach is managerially inept
as a way of breaking off the coaching relationship, and is, for this reason,
particularly useful when the psychoanalytic coach is led not to respond
directly to the clients expectations in order to avoid becoming lost in the
continual spiral of a symptomatological treatment of problems.
Moreover, even when the psychoanalytic coach does not intervene in
the clients managerial techniques, it remains advisable to be versed in the
evolution of management principles and methods (Kets de Vries, 2000;
Maccoby, 1998) in order to better observe changes in the symptom. Indeed,
from a Lacanian perspective, the symptom can only surface in response to
the Others demands. To use a rather telling example drawn from our own
consulting practice, let us consider the case of a boss who, both authoritarian
and paternalistic, sees herself endowed with divine rights and decrees that
all liberties taken relative to her orders by managerial staff will be heavily
penalized (for example, executives explicitly qualied as unworthy are
threatened with destitution and demotion). In this context, an executive who
believes he deserves such punishment will experience the inability to exert
hierarchical powers over subordinates or to attend Board Meetings (where
this statutory power is recognized), as though echoing his feeling of wrong-
doing.
Similarly, if the Other changes, the symptom, too, will change. For
example, when a participative manager who solicits his or her employees
total involvement in the corporate culture replaces an autocratic boss who
previously reigned with unshared powers, problems of motivation may well
take the place of problems of authority, and pathologies associated with
psychological fatigue at work replace the neurotic inhibitions linked to the
hierarchical structure of the former situation. This illustrates the relativity of
the symptom, which can be recognized if one has a certain amount of know-
ledge of management.
Now, let us turn to the question of whether the psychoanalytic coach
can work as a psychologist specialized in personal development. Once again,
we would answer this question in the afrmative, seeing that identifying the
Coach as a psy-something-or-other (Guinchard, 1996: 71) seems in keeping
with establishing a transferential relationship, necessary to all analytical
work. This is why it is appropriate to avoid all other uses of transference.
Specically, the psychoanalytic coach must take care to avoid becoming a
management Guru, exploiting the clients request for care, and to opt instead
for the oracular function of executive coaching, which implies that he or
she must, like an Oracle, echo the clients words of demand so as to prompt
the latter to reappraise his or her situation: Know yourself . . . instead of
disturbing the Other (Assoun, 1995: 28). This method does, nevertheless,
assume that the demand has rst been received, during the time it takes for
the transference to be made. By this, we do not mean, however, that the
executive coach should act directly on the symptoms sign (that is, give it a
meaning) by formulating interpretations, as attuned as they may be, but,
rather, that every effort should be made to favor the production of meaning
by the client him/herself. For example, when an executive coach nds
him/herself confronted by such typical complaints as: I cant communicate
with my team. I dont know whats going on, but its not working, he or she
should get the client to talk, to clarify and explain: I have no charisma . . .
so I monopolize discussions in meetings, which triggers a rejection . . ..
A managerial symptom can always be given a meaning, after all, and
the rst to try to do so is none other than the suffering manager. The execu-
tive coachs attentive listening can pick up on the theory developed by the
client to explain the origin of her or his problems. And if the latter does not
enter spontaneously into this quest, it becomes necessary, as Granoff (2001)
suggests, to question further, as analysts do in preliminary meetings (which
also exist in coaching) or once the couch routine is established and there no
longer seems to be any desire invested in the treatment: What do you think
is the cause of your difculties? Indeed, it is to the extent that the client-
manager tries to answer the question that transference love develops. As in
analysis, the more one speaks to seek meaning, the more one loves the person
to whom one is speaking (Lavie, 1997). The executive coach gradually
becomes the addressee of the clients symptoms and is even, ultimately,
strangely associated with them, to such a point that the manager thinks of
the coach when he or she encounters obstacles in management, while,
conversely, the mention of the coach is a reminder of the problems with
which he or she is confronted.
Moreover, the notion of the subject supposed to know that Lacan
introduced with respect to the psychoanalyst, means, in fact, that the latter
is supposed to possess knowledge about the origin of the symptom. We think
it is the same in coaching, and that the client progressively tends to perceive
the coach as someone having a certain familiarity with the cause of his or
her symptom. This idea is, moreover, reinforced by the fact that once trans-
ference has been established, there often ensues, as is the case in analysis, a
relative amelioration in the problems then under discussion. At the same
time, there can even emerge certain passing symptoms, relative to the
coaching itself. At this stage, the client, in his or her relation with the coach,
becomes very interested in questioning the symptom as sign: it is the why
that is of concern which is to say, the (ideally external) event that triggered
it all.
This is a very delicate point for the psychoanalytic executive coach.
First, care must be taken not to intervene directly in the framework of this
causal search that polarizes the client, for the interpretation that might result
about the meaning of the symptom, as an expression of the coachs know-
ledge, runs the risk of giving the symptom a substantiality, whereas Lacanian
metapsychology has underlined that the latter is repeated only as a signier.
At the same time, however, the executive coach should make sure that the
clients pursuit of causality continues, by letting him or her believe that some-
thing can be done about the symptom and that coaching will allow him or
her mastery of its cause and meaning. The fact is that the signier, which
constitutes the basic material of psychoanalytic coaching (as we shall see
below), only appears against a backdrop of meaning. As Nasio (1992) points
out, the signier can only have its own life beyond ourselves if we take it as
a sign that speaks to us, even unconsciously. In other words, for a symptom
to have the incisive weight of a signier, the coach must necessarily maintain
and favor the meaning provoked by the symptom considered as sign.
However, he or she must, at the same time, know not to stop at the sign if
he or she is to favor the signifying value of both the symptom (on the clients
side) and its interpretation (in his or her practice as psychoanalytic coach).
We might take as an example the case of a company manager who,
during our rst coaching interview, was only too willing to elaborate at
length on his policy of internal communication aimed at making things more
convivial. Despite the considerable means mobilized with this end in view,
however, his policy was not working as planned. As a strategic move, we
therefore asked the client to diagnose this failure, which led him to articu-
late various problems or recriminations (such as the incompetence of the
communications director, the executive staffs resistance to change, technical
errors in the diffusion of information, and so on). Having noticed, during
the course of this diagnosis, that the specic signiers used by the manager
insisted time and time again on the notion of exigence, we ended up asking
him about this. To show us concretely what he meant, our client then proudly
produced a laminated card from his pocket bearing the companys work
charter, which he had drafted himself and then distributed to all his employ-
ees. However, at the very moment he pointed to the expression exigeance of
quality, the spelling mistake (which cannot be qualied as a lapsus) became,
quite literally, glaringly obvious to both him and ourselves. As we started to
say to him: Look, its spelt like . . . he himself nished the sentence with the
exclamation: like vengeance! His rst reaction was one of surprise and
consternation, yet due to this unexpected signifying substitution he then went
on to evoke the history of the turbulent relations that he had had some years
previously with the founder of the company, described by our client himself
as hypocritical and smooth. For the rst time, it appeared to him that he
reproduced with his employees certain aspects of these past interactions.
This acknowledgment opened up not only an attention to the unconscious,
but also the possibility of new, more authentically positive, modes of mana-
gerial behavior. Our role had been limited to giving the signier its chance,
without seeking to impose meaning on what presented itself analytically as
a failed phantasy of conviviality. The important thing was to consider the
logic of the unconscious within a particular symbolic order, inaccessible, as
such, to any form whatsoever of psychologizing generalization.
The specicities of psychoanalytic coaching
From our experience in consultation and coaching, it is clear that when a
manager-client speaks to a coach, the problems of management and the
resulting pain that he or she is experiencing are described in quite singular
terms and unexpected metaphors. The knower is nally neither the coach
nor the client, but the unconscious knowledge which the subject bears
without his or her awareness. This is indeed the symptoms hidden signify-
ing side, which makes it an involuntary, opportune, meaningless event that
can repeat itself and of which, in short, the manager commands neither the
cause, the meaning, nor the repetition. It is indeed a signier only for other
signiers, past or future, with which it is articulated and linked. Replaced by
the symptom, it remains unknown to the subject, even while representing
him or her.
To put it in other words, the managerial problem experienced by the
client outside his or her will, is one event amongst others bearing an intrin-
sic relation to him or her and is not only without any meaning in itself (as
opposed to the sign) but also is in no way destined to receive any. Or again,
to transpose this in more general terms, this means that the signier traverses
subjects and goes beyond the meaning that they may give it. Thus, as a coach,
we have heard very enlightening remarks from clients, such as: It looks like
I dont want to recruit my replacement. Thats ten candidates that Ive refused
. . . or who havent stayed on . . . You might say I didnt make it easy for
them. In this case, the repetition compulsion seems to have been precari-
ously glimpsed by the client, even though remaining, for the time being,
simply assimilated to a passive resistance to recruitment whereas something
far more inuential and structural is certainly being expressed.
11
In executive coaching, tackling the signifying side of the symptom thus
means, for the client, that the cause is heard: his or her misfortune as a
manager derives rst from his or her desire. Consequently, the only question
that need matter concerns the way in which this has come about. For
example, how is the chain of events in the clients managerial life organized
and what is the order of the repetition? These are questions, amongst others,
that should be protably raised by the executive coach, based on the hypoth-
esis of the unconscious as both a structure and a constantly active process
that never ceases to be exteriorized by acts, events or words creating the
conditions that dene a signier. Psychoanalytically oriented executive
coaching thus allows an in-depth approach to the key problems faced by
someone in a managerial situation, including those that relate to the clients
identity as a desiring subject in the workplace.
It was within this resolutely Lacanian perspective that we introduced
the concept of symbolic debt, as applied to company functioning (Arnaud,
2002). By symbolic debt, we essentially mean commitments (in a large sense),
contracted by certain of the manager-clients predecessors the rms
founders, for example and still operating, though on an unconscious level,
in the linguistic signiers that they have left as a heritage in the organization
(such as adages having the value of Tables of Law).
12
It is a matter of debt
to the extent that the said predecessors unfailingly pursued a certain project
(such as the constant expansion of the company, for example) and trans-
mitted, as it were, this requirement, which, by being constantly taken up by
others, then remains active long after they are gone.
13
Related to the hidden
importance of the signifying order in economic life (Arnaud, 2003), the
notion of symbolic debt thus seems to us a useful one to take up here in the
perspective of a conceptualization seeking to single out the specicity of
psychoanalytically oriented coaching.
Since the signier governs, it is appropriate to take it literally from the
start, within a discursive framework where the executive coach will take care
to listen, rather than, or before, advising. As a form of alienation constituted
in and by the Other, as Lacan (1966: 354) would say, the symbolic debt is,
indeed, situated in language. This is why the symbolization carried out by
the subject constitutes a nodal point, insofar as it must allow for a way out
of the repetition of the debt, through the use of freed signiers. In this
context, the psychoanalytic coach will have the role both of uidifying the
compulsive repetition of symptoms by having the client gain increasing
freedom relative to him/herself, his or her history and words, and, as a result,
of accompanying, preserving and maintaining desire in the coaching relation-
ship. This can only be done if the coach consents to play the signifying
game, in order to avoid staying stuck on meaning, or even metaphor, with
the risk this brings of reinforcing the symptom. While there is no sure-re
formula to orient one in this domain, Lacans guiding principle can, in our
opinion, be applied just as well to the executive coach as to the analyst: one
should not try to understand or to reveal the symptoms meaning to the
client, because it is precisely the latter who must assume this meaning (Lacan,
1966: 349, 45992, 585645).
As Leclaire (1998) puts it, the only way to treat a symptom as a signi-
er is to replace it by another signier (a word that comes to the executive
coachs mind in the eld of transference-countertransference with the client).
The best interpretation that a psychoanalytically oriented executive coach
can suggest thus does not operate by the meaning it reveals (a common
conception), but by the signifying place it occupies, which is radically
different. As a succinct illustration, let us consider a situation in which a
client, the founder and CEO of an institutional catering company, wants to
uncover the underlying reasons of his choice of profession. We would suggest
that there is probably less need for the latter to delve deep into post-war
childhood memories of having often gone hungry with his brothers and
sisters (although this may have determined his choice of a catering service to
some extent) than to bring up the image of his father, a low-ranking military
corporal, whose vocabulary was peppered with military commands such as
reste au rang (an expression which literally means stand in line, but is also
a homonym, in French, of the word restaurant) and who was perceived by
his children as needing to be catered to.
In this analytical perspective, signifying substitutions always have
instantaneous effects: just as the sudden surprise felt by the executive coach
is the irrefutable indicator of the impact on him or her of the signifying effect
of a symptom, so the sudden surprise felt by the client undoubtedly connotes
the signifying impact of an interpretation. The method used is both very
simple, yet highly complex: for the executive coach, it consists in waiting for
an impromptu event during the coaching period, all the while remaining open
to surprise and doing away with all preconceived ideas or feelings, so as to
resemble a blank surface of inscription. It is a matter of letting oneself fall
into that particular state that Lacan (1970) termed semblance, which entails
creating a silence within and becoming deeply persuaded that, relative to
oneself, one knows nothing. Once this is the case, the psychoanalytically
oriented executive coach is in the right position to interpret that is, to be
surprised by the truth, which is both that of the client as well as his or her
own, and to transform the symptom into a signier that opens onto uncon-
scious knowledge. In this scheme, the interpretation will then be the expres-
sion of the coachs non-knowledge, that is to say of his or her unconscious,
or rather, the unconscious of the coaching situation itself.
Hence, one comes back to the fundamental Lacanian idea that there
exists no psychic structure of ones own, but that the unconscious links and
bonds individuals (Lacan, 1966: 258, 1981 [1955]: 128). The unconscious,
therefore, is neither individual nor collective, but is produced in the space
between the two, ricocheting from one subject to another. That said, the
successive appearance, disappearance and reappearance of the same signify-
ing element, in different times, places and subjects, is a process that only
occurs if transferential relations exist. This implies that the life of psycho-
analytically oriented executive coaches, like that of psychoanalysts, can be
beset with the recurrent symptoms of their clients. As Nasio (1992) once
again points out, all subjects, even the most aware, are traversed by the
universe of signiers insofar as this universe knows no borders. This explains
why it appears necessary that psychoanalytically oriented coaches, if they are
not also psychoanalysts, have at least been through psychoanalysis, where
their listening will have become ne-tuned and the knots they intend to untie
for their clients will rst have been untied within themselves.
Terminating coaching, interminable coaching
Given what we have said, what form might the termination of psychoana-
lytically inspired executive coaching take? The answer, due to the difculty
of the question, might be found by putting a new spin on yet another
question: would this form of executive coaching only come to an end if
continued on the couch, where one could personally untie all the knots that
one was unable to undo professionally? Unless, that is, psychoanalytically
oriented executive coaching is to be reserved for managers who have already
been analyzed (with the coach thus becoming a meta-analyst), or the experi-
ence to be considered a substitute for analysis. Given that we do not as yet
have the practical hindsight to be able to judge such matters, we would, for
our part, tend to draw a parallel with analytical treatment and simply outline
here the aim of this particular type of coaching. We believe, in fact, that
psychoanalytically inspired executive coaching, like psychoanalysis, must
aim to create the conditions for the subject to become be this ever so slightly
a stranger to him/herself, such that he or she goes through the exceptional
experience of being exiled from him/herself, as Nasio (1992: 117) so aptly
puts it. Which means, in other words, that the subject comes to perceive
him/herself, even just once, as other. Of course, such an experience where
the client encounters him/herself as though coming from the exterior can
only take place within the connes of the work done as well as professional
limits.
From this standpoint, psychoanalytically inspired executive coaching
is, in principle, less ambitious than the standard analytical treatment, and
yet, it can still have a primary impact on clients managerial practices. The
latter will be better able to avoid confusing their acts, whether successful or
not, with the activities of their Ego (an Ego exalted and without distance,
without the listening dimension of the Other), and to keep a certain distance
from what is happening to them or what they are made to endure. Care must
be taken not to let the coaching relation drift towards one of dependence, in
which the coach-crutch would be permanently set up as the clients
symptom, and thus unfailingly end up embodying the aws, weaknesses and
failures through which the unconscious is revealed. He or she would then
become no more than a sad understudy of the perverse manager, who literally
plays on situations and people under his or her management, only talking to
people to negate them or reinforce his or her narcissism.
In addition, just as in analysis (where there exists a notion of healing),
it seems essential that the executive coach (even if only secretly) consider the
resolution of the clients problems merely as a secondary benet of the
coaching itself. Indeed, were the executive coach to aim at instantly insti-
gating improvements in the clients management and to conceive the goal of
psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching in terms of change or
solution, we feel that the chances are high of his or her missing the mark.
He or she risks getting stuck in a logic of simple compensation for what the
client lacks, especially in terms of training. While a focus on training can be
useful, it is unfortunately directly applied to what appears to be missing,
insofar as problems in management are essentially conceived in terms of de-
ciencies. The client tends therefore to be considered as an object to be
modeled rather than as a subject.
On the contrary, it is far more appropriate to apply what Lacan (1966:
234) would, in Hegelian terms, call a ruse of reason with regard to truth: in
order for truth to emerge, let us appear to forget it and adopt a roundabout
way. It can indeed be very difcult for executive coaches to resist the
enormous demand of their clients, not only affectively (in terms of certain
sufferings that managers may express relative to their work) but also econ-
omically (given the framework of a clientsupplier relationship, where clients
are not used to being frustrated in their demands). While labeling themselves
psychoanalytically oriented executive coaches, they will no doubt have to
authorize themselves to act instrumentally on clients peripheral problems,
in order to preserve the essential. Not making this concession could, in our
opinion, cause the product psychoanalytically oriented executive coaching
to have no protable future other than in extremely limited areas, such as
the coaching of consultants or, indeed, of executive coaches themselves.
Acknowledgement
Translated by Louise Burchill.
Notes
1 This article deals only with individualized executive coaching practices, as group
coaching presents psycho-sociological particularities requiring the development of
specic modes of action.
2 Warren Bennis has rated executive coaching as an acceptable form of psychotherapy.
A recent study (Withers, 2001) reveals that 60 percent of coaching clients say that
they conde in their coach almost as much as they do in their best friend, spouse or
therapist.
3 See in particular the survey conducted by Bchaux and Rey (2003). See also Feli-
culis-Yvonneau (2002).
4 According to Susan Bloch, Head of Coaching at the Hay Group, executive coaching
is growing by about 40 percent a year (see Executive couching, The Economist, 8
March 2002, 364(8284): 51).
5 The term the real was introduced by Lacan to designate one of psychoanalysis
three essential registers, alongside of the symbolic and the imaginary. The real is not
reality, but a category produced by the symbolic that corresponds to what the latter
expels in the process of setting itself up. Lacan (1973 [1964]) retains from this expul-
sion of the real from the eld of the symbolic a denition that insists on the return
and the irreducible existence of the real, despite its being held in check. The real
returns within reality to a place where the subject is unable to encounter it, except
in the form of a confrontation that arouses the latter from his or her habitual state.
Dened as impossible, the real cannot be completely symbolized by speech or writing
and is therefore that which never ceases not to write itself. In the Dream of the
Burning Child, cited by Freud in The interpretation of dreams (1900) and later
taken as an example by Lacan, a father dreams that his son, who, in reality, has just
died as the result of a fever, calls out to him, exclaiming Father, dont you see that
Im burning? In fact, the dead body of the mans son had caught re in the next
room where an old man was supposed to be keeping watch over it. The father thus
dreams instead of waking up, but the sentence that he formulates on his own behalf
during his dream testies to his impossible desire that his son still be alive. The re
bears upon that which is removed here from the signiers themselves: namely, the
real of suffering and death (Chemama & Vandermersch, 1998: 361).
6 In an as yet unpublished text (Le sinthome, sminaire XXI I I , 1975), Lacan explains
that the symptom is what people have that is most real. This doesnt mean, however,
that the symptom constitutes a truth, which for Lacan is related to a search for
meaning; rather, Lacan understands it to be the very nature of human reality. Psycho-
analytic treatment (or any whatsoever of its derivatives) can in no way, therefore,
consist in getting rid of the symptom qua an effect of the structure of the subject.
Some symptoms function, moreover, as prostheses, as was the case with the activity
of writing for Joyce, according to Lacan. From this perspective, an analysis must
not be pushed too far: when the analysand thinks that he or she is happy, this
sufces. This is why Lacan introduced the clinical notion of sinthome (following
the etymology of the word symptom) as that which is not to be suppressed but
simply modied in order that desire remain possible.
7 Translators note: There is no adequate translation in English of jouissance(although
one might note that its English cognate was current in the Renaissance period, and
still used in 18th-century literary texts) and most English translations of Lacans
texts retain the French. J ouissance shares a common etymology with the English
enjoyment (as in the enjoyment of rights, and property), but the English word has
lost most of its former sexual connotations, while the French word simultaneously
covers sexual, spiritual, intellectual, and physical enjoyment or ecstasy. For a
more technical gloss on jouissance (which explains how it transgresses the pleasure
principle, and, thus why the translation of pleasure is disqualied): see the remarks
of A. Sheridon, in his translation of Lacans Ecrits (1977).
8 Beyond our personal experience, the following analysis is founded on 30 non pre-
structured qualitative interviews with practicing consultants in executive coaching
(working in the Paris area and the Midi-Pyrnes region). The textual content of these
interviews, each of which lasted about two hours, was then analyzed, with particular
attention given to the managerial conceptions that oriented the consultants practice.
9 Subject supposed to know: The French here is sujet suppos savoir, which, while
usually rendered in English in the form we have adopted here, has also been trans-
lated as the supposed subject of knowledge (Schneiderman, 1980) in order to stress
that Lacan means by this concept that both the subject and the knowing are
supposed [translators note]. Lacan (1960) cautions against a tendency to conceive
the analytical relation as though it were dual and symmetrical (transference/contre-
transference). According to Lacan, the very fact that one speaks to the analyst leads
the analysand to use the latter as the support of a gure of the Other, or, that is, of
a subject supposed to possess unconscious knowledge.
10 These different levels of executive coaching are often elaborately inter-related.
11 In this case, the clinical hypothesis we formulated concerned the place of the father,
in consideration of the compulsive signier predecessor which the client in question
(the manager of a small business) was to mention thrice during a coaching interview
even though he was speaking of his successors. His predecessor was the former
owner of the business while the successors in question had been recruited under
conditions such that nothing was clear for them as to their future role.
12 For more details, see the case of Franoise, a business development manager in a
recruiting rm (Arnaud, 2002: 7036).
13 Lets take as an example the case of Caroline who ran a nancial rm that had
belonged to her family for three generations. We were to discover during our fourth
coaching interview that our clients mother, the former company manager whom
our client spoke about abundantly, had apparently been seduced in her childhood
by her grandfather, the companys founder. It is clear in such a case that the seduced
party no longer knew, as an adult, what had happened (anymore than her
daughter did now) yet she had, nevertheless, continually referred to it in her own
way throughout the course of her daily life, both at home and at work. There was
nothing remarkable about this on a clinical level except for the fact that this secret
episode contained the hidden motives of the daughters itinerary. After eeing
overseas to take up a difcult position at the time when her father became
president of the holding company responsible for the rm, she had returned home
when her mother died to take the latters place but had then suddenly felt the desire
to set up an industrial security company (even though this risked breaking up the
family rm). As we were to sort out with our client, these events in her life were
organized around the visible secret, which, in fact, aimed merely to reduce the risk
of an incest that was perceived as imminent and, indeed, as ineluctable, even though
lacking any real object in the present other, at least, than in the form of a burden
inherited from the previous generation.
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Gilles Arnaud is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Dean of
Faculty at Toulouse Business School (ESC), France. He has a PhD in
Management Sciences from Toulouse University. His main research
interest lies in the interface between psychoanalysis, and management. In
particular, he has written and lectured on Lacan and organizations. He
currently works as an organizational consultant and serves on the
editorial board of Gerer & Comprendre(Ecole des Mines de Paris). He is
also a CEO member of the CIRFIP (International Centre for Research,
Training and Intervention in Psycho-sociology).
[E-mail: g.arnaud@esc-toulouse.fr]

A Coach or A Couch? A Lacanian Perspective On Executive Coaching and Consulting Gilles Arnaud

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