Finally, we can look to the special relationships that are formed within organizational ssttings. These are the “play spaces” that are created when an organization sets us a “skunk work” task force or sets aside a weekend each year for a retreat in which all members of an organization (regardless of formal status) get to share their ideas and dreams regarding the future of the organization. A setting is created. Facilitation processes are put in place that enable management and union leaders to share perspectives and seek to identify mutually satisfactory solutions to shared problems. Collateral organization is one term that has been sued to label these unique relations-based containers. The collateral organization is established on a short-term basis. It is set up a way that enables members of the organization to relate to one another in a new manner—hopefully reducing the anxiety associated with the issues being addressed and creating conditions for metabolism of these issues.
Special Events as Containers of Anxiety
Psychological containers can be engaged through the structuring of time intervals. There is a temporal demarcation. Now is the time for . . . something different. The 50-minute hour in psychotherapy, for instance, is an important container (especially in the containment of anxiety aroused during a therapy session). During much of the 20th Century we lived with the temporal container called the 9 to 5 workday, the 5-day work week, and the non-working weekend and vacation. With the introduction of the computer, internet and home office, this temporary container has often been eliminated.
Many years ago, Matthew Miles (1964) identified the important role played by temporary systems in 20th Century society – these temporary systems might be particularly important to engage in our VUCA-Plus world. Miles suggested that temporary systems are to be found throughout our society. However, they are often give n very little attention. Examples of temporary organizational systems that Miles offered include carnivals, theater, celebrations, games, retreats, workshops, conferences, task forces, project teams, coffee breaks, and office parties. At a more personal level, Miles identified love affairs and psychotherapeutic sessions as temporary systems.
The time-delineated container can thus be a specific event (such as Marti Gras or New Years Eve at Time Square). This often is an event that allows us to act in new ways—ways that defuse our anxiety or at least provide us with the opportunity for a short period of time to escape from our imagined lions. The event can actually be a ceremony or ritual that takes us to another plane – what Victor Turner (1969) described as a threshold experience (a state of “liminality”). This can be a graduation ceremony, a wedding, a Bar Mitzvah or a birthday party. The real lions in our life are set aside for a short while—so that we might celebrate our success in defeating past lions or moving into a new life stage that will enable us to do a better job of confronting lions.
