118 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP
processes are decided on in secret by a few senior fi gures. So, help is
sometimes needed to prevent the abuse of power in organizations and
shield against the loss of reality - based decision - making. This kind of
help can be provided by a courageous individual who is willing to chal-
lenge the organization ’ s leadership and help them see things from another
perspective, free from the distortions of sycophancy.
Just as the morosophe played with fi re when giving unpleasant news
to the king through his foolery, it is a risky business to articulate the
hidden agendas in organizational life, through dramatization, exaggera-
tion, and humor (Malone, 1980 ). Bringing unconscious material to the
surface in organizations can at times be explosive.
From early on Freud (1910) struggled with this issue in his paper
on ‘ wild ’ psychoanalysis. He thought that two conditions had to be fi lled
if informing another person of unconscious material were to have a
positive outcome and not lead to intensifi cation of confl ict:First, the patient must, through preparation, himself have reached the
neighborhood of what he has repressed and secondly, he must have formed
a suffi cient attachment (transference) to the physician for his emotional
relationships to him to make a fresh fl ight impossible.
Only when these conditions have been fulfi lled is it possible to rec-
ognize and to master the resistances which have led to repression and the
ignorance. Psychoanalytic intervention, therefore, absolutely requires a
fairly long period of contact with the patient. Attempts to ‘ rush ’ him at
fi rst consultation, by brusquely telling him the secrets which have been
discovered by the physician, are technically objectionable. (p. 226)What Freud is really saying is that, in order to ease the surfacing of
emotionally charged material in the context of psychotherapy, a working
alliance must fi rst be established between the two parties in question.
To accomplish this, a certain amount of trust is needed. Furthermore,
doses of insight have to be well - timed and carefully measured (Kets
de Vries and Miller, 1985 ; Kets de Vries, 2006 ). Similarly, in playing
the role of truthsayer, the sage – fool must realize that there are limits
to the amount of confl ict - ridden information the leader can accept at
any given time. Fortunately, humor can play an important role in
relieving tension when the truthsayer is trying to make a point about
a sensitive issue. It short - circuits resistances and improves the readiness
of the party toward whom the communication is directed to listen to
what is being said.
A good example of the role of the sage – fool in a certain form of
organizational life can be found in the novel The Good Soldier Svejk by
the Czech author Jaroslov Hasek (1972). In one of the greatest master-