Discourses on trauma in the South African Police Service (SAPS) focus primarily on the experience of traumatic events as the primary reason for the emotional difficulties that members experience. This study questions this dominant discourse and examines additional discourses that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics of trauma in the SAPS. The research entailed a qualitative analysis of 15 essays written by members of the SAPS, with the aim of exploring alternative discourses on the experience of trauma by police officers. The participants included fifteen male, officers from three units in the Gauteng region. The data were analysed within a psychodynamic frame, and findings suggest that police officers’ reactions to trauma are significantly influenced by factors other than mere exposure to traumatic events. The history of psychological trauma indicates that constructions of traumatic stress are strongly connected with cultural, social and political circumstances. Current psychodynamic thinking emphasises the meaning of the real traumatic occurrence, which causes trauma by changing a person’s experience of the self in relation to selfobjects. The research results suggest that the sociohistorical circumstances in South Africa, the transformation effected in the police service, and political and structural uncertainty play an important role in contributing to an overwhelming sense of loss and uncertainty. Perceived losses include the loss of the supportive police subculture, loss of meaning in their work, loss of a sense of masculinity as well as loss of a sense of competence and agency. Findings further reveal that officers’ experience a sense of being overwhelmed, powerless and helpless in the face of these historical and organisational changes. These feelings generate significant anxiety and impact negatively on officers’ self-esteem. Feelings of omnipotence and invulnerability, which are necessary for effective coping in the policing environment, are negatively affected. Furthermore, without the existence of a supportive social group, this anxiety becomes uncontained and unmanageable. / Thesis (PhD (Psychotherapy))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Psychology / PhD / unrestricted

Leaders bring unconscious information into their personal and working relationships. Some of this unconscious material is communicated through language use, and it is argued that one of the bridges between the unconscious and the conscious is language use. It is postulated that insight is possible into leaders’ understanding, meaning-making and leadership experience by exploring their language use, as the vehicle through which they make sense of the world. Hence, the aim of this study was to explore by developing and describing a systems psychodynamic model of language use as manifestation of leadership anxiety dynamics, to refine this theoretical model, and to explore the utility value of the theoretical model. A qualitative and descriptive research method was selected towards reaching this aim. Hermeneutic phenomenology, using the systems psychodynamic perspective allowed for the description, analysis and interpretation of the experiences of participants. Data was collected through a purposive, convenient sample, in the form of three listening posts, which comprised systems psychodynamic practitioners, business leaders and post-modern discourse analysts. Data was analysed by means of critical discourse analysis and systems psychodynamically informed discourse analysis. Manifesting themes were the language of titles, as potential space, and the language of silence versus non-silence; anxiety and its triggers, anxiety and leadership response, and anxiety and language use; the sources of anxiety, language as unconscious defence and offence and towards a language of vulnerability. The findings indicated that leaders use both conscious and unconscious expressions of language simultaneously. Language use manifested as the carrier of conscious messages (between sender and receiver) as well as the unconscious role of language, to attack (accessing the dark side of language use) or defend against anxieties, and to cover leadership vulnerabilities. Language use as container, as well as transitional phenomenon (a potential space) is a carrier of anxieties. Language use thus has the potential to be used for its defensive, regressive and relational value. In a world of uncertainty and increasing attack on and by leadership, the findings further indicated that the defended leaders should be aware of the conscious and unconscious impact and outcome of language. Language use is useful as a lens to explore, diagnose and raise awareness, because the unconscious reveals itself through language as speech and image, and through the language of relations and relatedness and the language of action and omission. Since leaders operate in a colliquated space, both at individual and systemic level (i.e. as collisions), leadership anxiety could be elevated, resulting in the access of the dark side of language use. However, when these collisions occur, leadership anxiety could be reduced when the leader enters the reflective or potential space by accessing the relational value of language use. The utility value of the systems psychodynamic model was subsequently also confirmed. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / D. Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)