The second level of personal freezing that occurs when collusion is rampant concerns what Edgar Schein (1978) calls the psychological contract. This contract concerns the fulfillment of semi-conscious assumptions on the part of organizational members with regard to fulfillment of their own psychological needs via their work in and contributions to the organization. The contract can be renegotiated, but at great cost to the employee (and the organization). Psychological contracts are often part-and-parcel of the collusion: “I will provide the leader with unconditional allegiance and the organization will, in turn, provide me with job security.” “I will speak up on behalf of the downtrodden in this organization and will expect, in return, the admiration and loyalty of the other rabble-rousers in this organization.”
The third level of personal freezing and the main architect of personal armor is something I have labeled the psychological covenant. While a psychological contract can be renegotiated—admittedly often at great cost—the psychological covenant is permanent. It is a deeply held, profoundly person and pervasive belief that the organization must meet certainly psychological needs and that I (the employee) will sacrifice something(s) (perhaps everything) (time, money, status, other relationships, etc.) in exchange for the meeting of these needs. The covenant is not to be broken. If it is, then the consequences are depression, anger, and even violence. The workplace violence we have witnessed in recent years and the mass-killings that have become all too common in the United States are founded in the shattering of a covenant. We might even conceive of terrorist actions as involving the breaking of a covenant (often of a religious nature).
Collusion is very difficult to identify and analyze (let alone disrupt or eliminate) if psychological covenants are in operation and if the anxiety that exists in an organization is pervasive. With my colleague, Michael Cassatly (Cassatly and Bergquist, 2011) I have written about the psychological covenant existing in contemporary health care systems—especially among physicians. Collusive dynamics operate with great power and persistence among physicians, between physicians and other members of the medical staff, and (in particular) between physicians and their patients. These dynamics are of even greater intensity and are even more embedded in contemporary health care organizations that are going through major challenge (hence are more anxiety-ridden) and in the daily tension-filled challenges of treating illness and healing wounds. Suzan Guest, Terrence Rooney and I (Bergquist, Guest and Rooney, 2003) have written about the wounding of the healers and attribute much of this wounding to the impact of sustained anxiety and uncertainty on the medical staff and the frequently shattering of psychological covenants embraced by medical staff as they confront managed care, shifting government policies and procedures, and changing relationships with patients and other health care stakeholders.
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