The Role of Trauma and Retraumatization of a Leader in the Organization Development (on the Example of a Narcissistic Personality)

The goal of this work is to study the role of a primary traumatic event of an organizational leader, on the functioning level and typology of his personal organization, his leadership style and the nature of the organizational culture he creates. Furthermore, the goal is to identify the sources and consequences of an onset of the leader's retraumatization episode, as reflected in his personal and organizational changes, which affected the trajectory of his life, his professional path, and that of his followers. As part of the theoretical objectives of the study, the analysis was performed to determine the role of a narcissistic trauma on the formation of personality with narcissistic pathology. The analysis included a range of leadership and organizational styles, the nature of personal and organizational regression, as the role of aggression and destruction in the pathology of narcissism. As part of empirical objectives, using the method of longitudinal research, including a study of a sample of subjects over the course of a 20 year span, the analysis of the biographical and career paths a leader was carried out, focused on personality changes, characteristics of mental functioning and directional decision making, as a consequence of a retraumatization episode. The analysis included a psychodynamic diagnostics of the leader's company, analysis of organizational changes, and an identification of correlation of the leader's functioning level to his followers and the group as a whole. The results of the study proved that the influence of leader’s early trauma on his functioning level, to the formation of his personal organization, to his leadership style and to the nature of the organizational culture he created. As as result of a re-traumatization event, a dramatic scenario destructively played out in the organizational space, which had a direct impact on the group dynamics and devastating consequences for the business.