Introduction to the Symposium. Occupational Survival1

¹Occupational Survival was the title of a pioneering book by Carole Satyamurti (1981) on a social services department researched at a period of crisis, which contributed to the early development of this field of study at the Tavistock and the University of East London in the 1970s.

: Contemporary Experiences of Professional Workers

Abstract

This introductory article explains the origins of the symposium in a professional doctorate research programme taking place at the Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London. It identifies common themes in the articles that follow. It notes that all three studies make use of qualitative methods with small samples, and notes the strengths and limitations of these. Theoretically, it describes the common focus of the symposium on the anxieties experienced by the professional subjects of the research in the performance of their responsibilities, and on how adequately or otherwise these are contained by the organisational systems in which they work. It notes that the containment of anxiety among professional workers is a significant issue in public services now mostly dominated by a new managerialist ethos.

Keywords:

• practitioner research
• qualitative research methods
• containment of anxiety in organisations

Notes

² There are related professional doctorate programmes at the Tavistock and UEL in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy and Systemic Therapy. The Tavistock Centre for Couple Therapy and UEL have a similar programme in Couple Therapy.

¹ Occupational Survival was the title of a pioneering book by Carole Satyamurti (1981) on a social services department researched at a period of crisis, which contributed to the early development of this field of study at the Tavistock and the University of East London in the 1970s.

³ The distinction between intensive and extensive research methods, and the argument that most of the important discoveries in the natural sciences have been made by intensive methods, has been best made by the philosopher of science, Rom Harré (1993, 2009).

⁴ This original use of this distinction in regard to the methodology of the social sciences is often attributed to Rudner (1966, p. 5).