The Care of the Patient

Abstract

The author recently became aware of many MBA students who expressed feelings of not belonging, of being different from others in their program. At the same time, articles began appearing in the press about changing the MBA curricula to include more consideration of morals and ethics. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the conflict aroused in many students who choose a business career for economic reasons and find it difficult to reconcile the societal stereotypes and expectations of the business world with their own values and self-concepts. Much has been written about career choice and identity consolidation, of the ways in which ideals are incorporated into a professional identity in, for example, medicine, law, humanities, and science. A literature search revealed little related to business, where most of the articles concern gender differences. Some of the issues noted here seem more akin to the way in which creative artists struggle with producing commercial forms of their art to survive. In psychodynamic terms, the ambivalence seems to be related to the incapacity of some students to internalize certain concepts and goals in such a way that they can proceed, in the more usual way, to employ the imitative processes that facilitate learning and promote meaningful identifications. Anecdotal case material is included to illustrate the author's belief that a brief therapeutic contact may be useful toward helping such students remedy a temporary imbalance by regaining a sense of self-esteem which permits greater resolution of integration.