Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala university, Uppsala, Sweden.
J Hist Behav Sci. 2023 Jul;59(3):301-321. doi: 10.1002/jhbs.22240. Epub 2023 Feb 3.
This article examines the introduction of "sensitivity training" to 1970s Swedish work life. Drawing upon a range of empirical materials, I explore the politics that were involved in the process of translating and adapting this group dynamic method to the Swedish context and consider how its proponents argued for its value. By approaching sensitivity training as an attempt to govern, shape, and regulate both human beings and the work organizations of which they were a part, I argue that sensitivity training presents an unexpectedly early example of a governing rationality that has elsewhere been described and theorized as "neoliberal." The fact that sensitivity training was established in Swedish work life already in the early 1970s thus challenges the historiography of neoliberal modes of government, which have elsewhere been associated with a neoliberal shift in state policies occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how emotionally liberating practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s were embraced by some of the most politically influential actors in contemporary Swedish society, such as the corporate sector and the trade unions. As blue-collar trade unions and social democrats voiced increasingly far-reaching demands concerning workplace democracy and improved workplace conditions, advocates of sensitivity training presented their method as crucial to the process of "democratizing" and "humanizing" Swedish work life. Intimately associated with the new therapies of humanistic psychology, sensitivity training was used within the corporate sector to foster a more emotional and authentic leadership style that would embrace the values of emotional awareness, self-expression, and self-actualization. The crying boss emerged in this context as a key figure in the project of creating a "democratic" and psychologically satisfying organization. Yet, sensitivity training was also described as a means for companies to make better use of what was now asserted as their most important economic asset: the human being. From the outset, the idealistic vision of an emotionally liberated, democratic workplace was thus entangled with a specific kind of economic rationality, in which the emotionally liberated, self-actualizing individual emerged as a capital or asset that would be better utilized if the organization allowed-even encouraged-employees to engage in their own well-being and self-optimization.
本文考察了“敏感性训练”在 20 世纪 70 年代被引入瑞典工作生活的情况。通过利用一系列经验材料，我探讨了在将这种群体动态方法翻译成瑞典语境并考虑其支持者如何为其价值辩护的过程中所涉及的政治。通过将敏感性训练视为一种试图治理、塑造和规范人类以及他们所参与的工作组织的尝试，我认为敏感性训练提供了一个意想不到的早期例子，说明一种治理理性，这种理性在其他地方被描述和理论化为“新自由主义”。事实上，敏感性训练早在 20 世纪 70 年代就已在瑞典的工作生活中确立，这挑战了新自由主义治理模式的历史编纂，后者在其他地方与 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代发生的国家政策新自由主义转变有关。本文表明，20 世纪 60 年代末和 70 年代初的情感解放实践是如何被当代瑞典社会中一些最有政治影响力的行为者所接受的，如企业界和工会。随着蓝领工会和社会民主党对工作场所民主和改善工作条件的要求越来越高，敏感性训练的倡导者提出，他们的方法对于“民主化”和“人性化”瑞典工作生活的过程至关重要。敏感性训练与人文主义心理学的新疗法密切相关，它在企业界被用来培养更具情感和真实的领导风格，这种风格将拥抱情感意识、自我表达和自我实现的价值观。在这种背景下，哭泣的老板成为创造一个“民主”和心理满足的组织项目的关键人物。然而，敏感性训练也被描述为公司更好地利用其最重要的经济资产的一种手段：人。从一开始，情感解放、民主工作场所的理想主义愿景就与一种特定的经济理性纠缠在一起，在这种理性中，情感解放、自我实现的个体成为一种资本或资产，如果组织允许——甚至鼓励——员工参与自己的幸福和自我优化，那么这种个体就会得到更好的利用。
