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Organizational identity offers a theory and practice for analyzing the intersubjective meaning of organizational behavior. It advances an explanation of individual feelings about organizations rooted in infancy, what Winnicott (1965) calls a "holding environment," and an explanation of interpersonal relationships in adulthood but with origins in infancy and childhood, what Kohut (1977; 1984) calls "selfobject transferences. "It further presents the notion of transference of emotions in hierarchical organizations as an instrument for observing and explaining key interpersonal relationships between organizational super ordinates and subordinates, and between organizational analysts and clients. Knowing organizational identity provides an understanding of unconscious motivations governing the behavior of organizational members.

In this article the author uses Harry Stack Sullivan's theory of social psychiatry and various psychoanalytic applications of organizational theory to suggest to what extent bureaucratized human relations and formal organizational stuctures are products of the psyche and thereby perpetuated by people. A central theme is that bureaucracy enhances the structural manifestation of embedded defensive operations of the person. Asserting the dominance of security needs as motivating forces over other human needs, Sullivan's psychiatry uncovers a serious paradox for students of organizational behavior and development interested in directing the course of bureaucratic reform and organizational change. This article directs future empirical research on the topic of interpersonal and organizational resistance to change and psychological reliance on bureaucratic styles of management.

Individual regression in groups stems from anxiety arising from each individual's attempt to construct a psychodynamic equilibrium between one's demands for adequate self-identity (individuality that is not a threat to other group members) and group membership (affiliation that is not a threat to one's identity). The dilemma of reconciling needs for individuality and group membership provokes annihilation anxiety in which one resorts to regressive action in order to protect one's self from anxiety associated with uncertain object-relations, annihilation and feelings of persecution, and loss of affiliation. As a result, group cultures often are characterized by unconscious actions and shared fantasies stemming from the sum of individual regressed and primitive coping defenses. Individual regression and other primitive defensive actions are observable at the group level of analysis, and lend themselves to description as a group culture. The psychodynamics of individual and group regression with four work-group typologies is illustrated. Each typology represents a predominant coping pattern observed in groups as members attempt to contain their basic anxiety.

Appreciation for irrational individual and organizational characteristics is fundamental to the ability to "enter"and comprehend the true significance of interpersonal and organizational behavior. Efforts to better comprehend human performance in complex bureaucratic organizations must acknowledge the impact of irrational psychological defensiveness on administrative behavior. The authors construct a conceptual model of psychological responses to stress in bureaucratic organizations in which they illustrate the dynamic, interactive relationship between stress, self-esteem, and psychological defenses aimed at alleviating anxiety, and the ability to act responsibly.