Michael Maccoby
Encyclopedia
Michael Maccoby is a psychoanalyst
and anthropologist
globally recognized as an expert on leadership for his research, writing and projects to improve organizations and work. He has authored or co-authored twelve books and consulted to companies, governments, the World Bank, unions, research and development centers and laboratories, universities and orphanages in 26 countries.
. He then studied philosophy with Stuart Hampshire
and Bernard Williams
at New College, Oxford
on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. As a graduate student at Harvard he was a teaching fellow and secretary to the Committee on Educational Policy at the faculty of Arts and Sciences. He received a PhD from Harvard in Social Relations (combining social psychology and personality with anthropology) in 1960. At Harvard he worked with David Riesman
, Jerome Bruner
, B.F. Skinner, and McGeorge Bundy
, and also studied with the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn
. At the University of Chicago he studied with the anthropologist Robert Redfield
and the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim
. Also at Chicago he studied Machiavelli with the political philosopher Leo Strauss
. He married Sandylee Weille in 1959. Between 1960 and 1968 they lived in Mexico. They have four children, Annie Berglof, Izette Folger, Nora Hathaway and Max Maccoby.
to train as a psychoanalyst with Erich Fromm
at the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis and study psychological factors in development. He completed this training with the Degree in Psychoanalysis in 1964. With Fromm he co-authored Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970, 1996), which reported their ten-year, multidisciplinary social science study which showed how family history, social character, and one’s work strongly determines the degree of social adaptation, psychopathology or well-being.
Between 1962 and 1988 Dr. Maccoby practiced clinical psychoanalysis, largely with high-functioning adult patients, and he trained and supervised psychiatrists and psychologists from the United States, Mexico, and Spain. In 1968 he worked in the Eugene McCarthy
presidential campaign, traveling around the country organizing delegate hearings to persuade delegates to support McCarthy. He also organized intellectuals, including some like Daniel Patrick Moynihan
who had supported Robert Kennedy.
In 1969, as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
, he was awarded a grant from Harvard’s Program on Technology and Society to study the companies and their managers who were creating the new information and communication technology. This research in HP, Texas Instruments, IBM and other high tech companies was reported in his book The Gamesman (1977) which was a best-seller, reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday book review. It was a pioneering application of socio-psychoanalytic understanding to personality and leadership in business.
He was a Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies from 1969 to 1977. In 1972, he directed the Bolivar Project, the first modern joint management-union partnership (Harman Industries and the United Auto Workers
) to improve the quality of working life in the auto industry.It was supported by the Ford Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the National Productivity Commission. As a result of this project, he was invited to lead quality of worklife programs in the U.K. and with AT&T
and the Communication Workers of America. (see The Leader (1981), Why Work? (1988, 1995) and Agents of Change (2003), with Charles Heckscher, Rafael Ramirez and Pierre-Eric Tixier).
During the Carter administration at the Department of Commerce he led a project to improve the quality of working life and at the Department of State he created a participative project that determined the kind of leadership needed. During the Reagan administration he helped the US ambassador in New Delhi to develop a collaborative embassy team and under the auspices of State he provided lectures to Chile's business community on Democracy and Free Enterprise before the plebiscite of 1988. From 1969-1990 he directed the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at the Kennedy School
at Harvard. Since 1980 he has been the President of the Maccoby Group, a consultancy, and Director of the Project on Technology, Work and Character, a not-for-profit research center.
In The Productive Narcissist (2003) and The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow (2007), Dr. Maccoby has applied psychoanalytic concepts, including the theory of social character
, to the study of leadership and followership. Building on Fromm, he proposes that social character is the internalized culture which is formed in childhood to enable people to adapt to the demands of work and social patterns in that culture. In his books and writings he contrasts social character formed by peasant, industrial-bureaucratic, and knowledge-service dominated cultures. He has also developed interpretative interview and survey instruments and methodology for revealing a person’s social character and personality.
In 1973, Volvo management asked Dr. Maccoby to help develop innovative factories. He was then invited by the Swedish Council on Leadership (FA rådet) to direct a study of Swedish leaders and to propose the kind of leaders Sweden needed for the future. He published the results in Dagens Nyheter
, Sweden’s largest newspaper and in two books, one in Swedish (Ledare fur Sverige, 1987), and the other in English (Sweden at the Edge, 1990). Dr. Maccoby has consulted on leadership to numerous Swedish organizations. In 2008, King Carl XVI Gustav made him Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Sweden. In 2004, Dr. Maccoby facilitated the National Coalition on Health Care in developing specifications for a comprehensive health care policy in America. With a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
, he studied some of the most effective health care organizations in America, resulting in the report Leadership for Health Care (2001). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association
and the American Anthropological Association
, the Society for Applied Anthropology
, and the National Academy of Public Administration
. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Global Business Network
, and the Cosmos Club
.
From 1986 to 2011 he wrote a column, The Human Side, for Research Technology Management and was recognized by The International Association of Management of Technology (IAMOT) as one of the top 50 authors of writings on technology and innovation management over the last 5 years. He has taught at ornell University the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Chicago
, the National University of Mexico, Sciences Po
(Paris Institute of Political Studies), the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, the Brookings Institution
, the Washington School of Psychiatry, and Templeton College and Said Business School
of Oxford University. He has served on the boards of the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Albert Shanker Institute
, the Tällberg Foundation, and Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos
(NPH), an orphanage in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries based on humanistic principles that stimulate development. He was a close associate of Father William Wasson, the founder of NPH.
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
globally recognized as an expert on leadership for his research, writing and projects to improve organizations and work. He has authored or co-authored twelve books and consulted to companies, governments, the World Bank, unions, research and development centers and laboratories, universities and orphanages in 26 countries.
Early life, education, and family
He was born in Mt. Vernon, NY March 5, 1933 where his father was a reform rabbi and his mother was a teacher. Except for two years at the Brandes School in Tucson, Arizona, Maccoby attended public school in Mt. Vernon. He was graduated from A.B. Davis HS where he was awarded the General von Steuben medal for excellence in American History. At age 15, he organized and led an interfaith organization, the Westchester Youth Council for American Brotherhood,and in later years has worked closely with Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish organizations. He received a BA (magna cum laude) at Harvard in 1954 where he was president of the The Harvard CrimsonThe Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
. He then studied philosophy with Stuart Hampshire
Stuart Hampshire
Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire was an Oxford University philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at...
and Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams was an English moral philosopher, described by The Times as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time. His publications include Problems of the Self , Moral Luck , Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , and Truth and Truthfulness...
at New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. As a graduate student at Harvard he was a teaching fellow and secretary to the Committee on Educational Policy at the faculty of Arts and Sciences. He received a PhD from Harvard in Social Relations (combining social psychology and personality with anthropology) in 1960. At Harvard he worked with David Riesman
David Riesman
David Riesman , was a sociologist, attorney, and educator....
, Jerome Bruner
Jerome Bruner
Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
, B.F. Skinner, and McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge "Mac" Bundy was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979...
, and also studied with the anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn
Clyde Kluckhohn
Clyde Kluckhohn , was an American anthropologist and social theorist, best known for his long-term ethnographic work among the Navajo and his contributions to the development of theory of culture within American anthropology.-Early life and education:...
. At the University of Chicago he studied with the anthropologist Robert Redfield
Robert Redfield
Robert Redfield was an American anthropologist and ethnolinguist. Redfield graduated from the University of Chicago, eventually with a J.D. from its law school and then a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, which he began to teach in 1927...
and the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.-Background:...
. Also at Chicago he studied Machiavelli with the political philosopher Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss
Leo Strauss was a political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated to the United States...
. He married Sandylee Weille in 1959. Between 1960 and 1968 they lived in Mexico. They have four children, Annie Berglof, Izette Folger, Nora Hathaway and Max Maccoby.
Work
He was awarded a Research and Training Fellowship from the National Institute of Mental HealthNational Institute of Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health...
to train as a psychoanalyst with Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...
at the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis and study psychological factors in development. He completed this training with the Degree in Psychoanalysis in 1964. With Fromm he co-authored Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970, 1996), which reported their ten-year, multidisciplinary social science study which showed how family history, social character, and one’s work strongly determines the degree of social adaptation, psychopathology or well-being.
Between 1962 and 1988 Dr. Maccoby practiced clinical psychoanalysis, largely with high-functioning adult patients, and he trained and supervised psychiatrists and psychologists from the United States, Mexico, and Spain. In 1968 he worked in the Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
presidential campaign, traveling around the country organizing delegate hearings to persuade delegates to support McCarthy. He also organized intellectuals, including some like Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
who had supported Robert Kennedy.
In 1969, as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is an American interdisciplinary research body in Stanford, California focusing on the social sciences and humanities . Fellows are elected in a closed process, to spend a period of residence at the Center, released from other duties...
, he was awarded a grant from Harvard’s Program on Technology and Society to study the companies and their managers who were creating the new information and communication technology. This research in HP, Texas Instruments, IBM and other high tech companies was reported in his book The Gamesman (1977) which was a best-seller, reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday book review. It was a pioneering application of socio-psychoanalytic understanding to personality and leadership in business.
He was a Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies from 1969 to 1977. In 1972, he directed the Bolivar Project, the first modern joint management-union partnership (Harman Industries and the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
) to improve the quality of working life in the auto industry.It was supported by the Ford Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the National Productivity Commission. As a result of this project, he was invited to lead quality of worklife programs in the U.K. and with AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
and the Communication Workers of America. (see The Leader (1981), Why Work? (1988, 1995) and Agents of Change (2003), with Charles Heckscher, Rafael Ramirez and Pierre-Eric Tixier).
During the Carter administration at the Department of Commerce he led a project to improve the quality of working life and at the Department of State he created a participative project that determined the kind of leadership needed. During the Reagan administration he helped the US ambassador in New Delhi to develop a collaborative embassy team and under the auspices of State he provided lectures to Chile's business community on Democracy and Free Enterprise before the plebiscite of 1988. From 1969-1990 he directed the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at the Kennedy School
Kennedy School
The Kennedy School is a former elementary school that has been converted to a hotel, movie theater and dining establishment in northeast Portland, Oregon. The facility is operated by the McMenamins chain.-External links:*...
at Harvard. Since 1980 he has been the President of the Maccoby Group, a consultancy, and Director of the Project on Technology, Work and Character, a not-for-profit research center.
In The Productive Narcissist (2003) and The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow (2007), Dr. Maccoby has applied psychoanalytic concepts, including the theory of social character
Social character
The social character is the central basic concept of the analytic social psychology of Erich Fromm. It describes the formation of the shared character structure of the people of a society or a social class according to their way of life and the socially typical expectations and functional...
, to the study of leadership and followership. Building on Fromm, he proposes that social character is the internalized culture which is formed in childhood to enable people to adapt to the demands of work and social patterns in that culture. In his books and writings he contrasts social character formed by peasant, industrial-bureaucratic, and knowledge-service dominated cultures. He has also developed interpretative interview and survey instruments and methodology for revealing a person’s social character and personality.
In 1973, Volvo management asked Dr. Maccoby to help develop innovative factories. He was then invited by the Swedish Council on Leadership (FA rådet) to direct a study of Swedish leaders and to propose the kind of leaders Sweden needed for the future. He published the results in Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Nyheter
is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It has the largest circulation of Swedish morning newspapers, followed by Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet, and is the only morning newspaper that is distributed to subscribers across the whole country. In 2009 DN had a circulation of 316,000, reaching 881...
, Sweden’s largest newspaper and in two books, one in Swedish (Ledare fur Sverige, 1987), and the other in English (Sweden at the Edge, 1990). Dr. Maccoby has consulted on leadership to numerous Swedish organizations. In 2008, King Carl XVI Gustav made him Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his services to Sweden. In 2004, Dr. Maccoby facilitated the National Coalition on Health Care in developing specifications for a comprehensive health care policy in America. With a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the United States' largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care; it is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The foundation's mission is to improve the health and health care of all Americans...
, he studied some of the most effective health care organizations in America, resulting in the report Leadership for Health Care (2001). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
and the American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association is a professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 11,000 members, the Arlington, Virginia based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic...
, the Society for Applied Anthropology
Society for Applied Anthropology
The Society for Applied Anthropology is a U.S.-based professional association for applied anthropology, established "to promote the integration of anthropological perspectives and methods in solving human problems throughout the world; to advocate for fair and just public policy based upon sound...
, and the National Academy of Public Administration
National Academy of Public Administration (United States)
The National Academy of Public Administration was founded by James E. Webb, then-administrator of NASA, and other leading public administration practitioners in 1967 and chartered under Title 36 of the United States Code in 1984 under Public Law 98-257. The Academy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan...
. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Global Business Network
Global Business Network
Global Business Network, or GBN, is a strategy consulting firm and member of Monitor Group, that helps businesses, NGOs, and governments use scenario planning to plan for multiple possible futures....
, and the Cosmos Club
Cosmos Club
The Cosmos Club is a private social club in Washington, D.C., founded by John Wesley Powell in 1878. In addition to Powell, original members included Clarence Edward Dutton, Henry Smith Pritchett, William Harkness, and John Shaw Billings. Among its stated goals is "The advancement of its members in...
.
From 1986 to 2011 he wrote a column, The Human Side, for Research Technology Management and was recognized by The International Association of Management of Technology (IAMOT) as one of the top 50 authors of writings on technology and innovation management over the last 5 years. He has taught at ornell University the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, the National University of Mexico, Sciences Po
Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris
The Institut d'études politiques de Paris , simply referred to as Sciences Po , is a public research and higher education institution in Paris, France, specialised in the social sciences. It has the status of grand établissement, which allows its admissions process to be highly selective...
(Paris Institute of Political Studies), the Mexican Institute of Psychoanalysis, the Brookings Institution
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...
, the Washington School of Psychiatry, and Templeton College and Said Business School
Saïd Business School
Saïd Business School is the business school of the University of Oxford in England, located on the north side of Frideswide Square on the former site of Oxford Rewley Road railway station. It is the University's centre of learning for graduate and undergraduate students in business, management...
of Oxford University. He has served on the boards of the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Albert Shanker Institute
Albert Shanker Institute
The Albert Shanker Institute is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing democratic ideals, improving the quality of public education, and conducting research into the labor movement and the sociology of work...
, the Tällberg Foundation, and Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos
Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos
Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos , literally meaning Our little brothers and sisters, is an organization that has provided a home for thousands of orphans and abandoned children since 1954...
(NPH), an orphanage in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries based on humanistic principles that stimulate development. He was a close associate of Father William Wasson, the founder of NPH.