The Transitional Space and Self-Recovery: a Psychoanalytical Approach to High-Potential Managers’ Training

Abstract

In France, more and more high-potential managers seek an additional diploma in management (Executive MBA). They then begin a long (2-year) part-time training programme. As they look for new knowledge in order to obtain that coveted job, they discover that they are involved in process of a self-recovery. Confrontation with other participants, the training methods as a whole, and in particular coaching, help them to discover new possibilities. Usually they have talents and repressed desires that have been hidden for a long time. The training programme actually works as a true transitional space that permits them to abandon their false self, erected as protection against a threatening environment. Few of them will be CEOs. However, the others will be able to choose their careers according to who they are, and not according to what they are asked to be.