Histrionic Managers Wreak Havoc in the Workplace: Identifying the Phenomenon

Abstract

Histrionic thinking and behavior derive more from emotion than from reason, creating a condition that causes problems for both those who display this emotional style and those they interact with. When histrionic people “manage” others in the workplace, a destructive dynamic often supervenes as employee and manager pursue the goals of work, frequently at cross purposes. In a naturalistic study, three incidents from my experience with histrionic managers are described and the underlying phenomenon of the histrionic manager is identified. This phenomenon is postulated to be universal, which is to say that managers with a histrionic style will be found wherever work is done.

Notes

¹The phenomenon of the histrionic manager characterized here using intuitive phenomenology is, in some ways, in line with the “hysterical style” described by David Shapiro in Neurotic Styles (1965, pp. 108–133), his study of neurosis that is rooted in psychoanalytic ego psychology. Although Shapiro and I begin our investigations from very different starting points and adhere to different philosophical anthropologies, we ultimately overflow our perspectives and reach somewhat comparable conclusions about what it means to be histrionic.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

René J. Muller

René J. Muller is currently working on an approach to diagnosing mental illness based on the psychobiology of Adolf Meyer and the Johns Hopkins perspectives of psychiatry. He is the author, most recently, of Psych ER: Psychiatric Patients Come to the Emergency Room and Doing Psychiatry Wrong: A Critical and Prescriptive Look at a Faltering Profession.