The psycho-dynamics of human animal connections
Eight-week live interactive online course
Prof Susan Long & Margo Lockhart
The psycho-dynamics of human animal connections
Eight-week live interactive online course with
Professor Susan Long & Margo Lockhart
Starting 5 October 2022
This course is open to participants interested in how the psychodynamics of human animal connections might aid you in your professional and private lives. It is designed as a pilot course at a postgraduate level although there are no pre-requisite studies required. It will be conducted live interactive online via zoom.
Course Content
This course explores the spaces that animals occupy in human social and cultural worlds and the interactions humans have with them. Central to the subject is an exploration of the notion of sentience, who or what we see as sentient, and what significance this has in human group, organisational and social behaviours. Participants explore their own connections and relationships with animals.
The course involves four main areas: how societies ‘construct’ animals through literature, film, art, and cultural ceremonies; the ecological significance of human animal connectedness; how humans use animals through economies such as farming, domestication, laboratory use of animals and the consumption of animals and related phenomena such as the concept of the ‘meat paradox’; and finally attitudes to animals, where participants explore human-pet relationships and the concept of anthropomorphism.
Participants are invited to examine their own interactions with animals through methods such as the use of drawing and a field trip to an organisation which is associated with animals. This might be a pet store, an animal welfare group, a farm, a zoo; or involvement in a program involving animals, such as a horse whispering program.
Participants also explore various attitudes to animals within a small group and observe the dynamics that occur throughout this exploration.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this course participants would be expected to attain
knowledge about and insight into:
- The definition of ‘animal’ and our own ‘animality’;
- Animals as symbols in human systems- in literature the arts, folk lore, cults and ceremonial ceremonies;
- The emerging discipline of ‘Anthrozoology’, the study of the interactions between humans and other animals;
- The co-evolution of humans and animals;
- The ways animals are used, consumed, thought about, and ‘not thought about’ in our personal and work systems;
- The concept of ‘carnism’ as defined by Melanie Joy (2010).
and skills in:
- Identification and management of unconscious processes related to animals in everyday life;
- Identifying and working with paradox;
- Intercultural and institutionalised understanding of various attitudes and treatment of animals and collaboration on these issues;
- Understanding social defences and one’s own individual defences against unpleasant truths;
- Drawing, writing and verbally articulating one’s own attitudes and actions with relation to animals.
References (for interest)
Bastian, B., Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., & Radke, H. R. M. (2012). Don’t mind meat? The denial of mind to animals used for human consumption. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38,
247–256.
DeMello, M. (2012). Animals and society. An introduction to human–animal studies. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Herzog, H. (2010) Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat. Why it’s so Hard to Think Straight about Animals. USA. Harper Collins.
Hutchins,G. and Storm, L. (2019) Regenerative Leadership. The DNA of life affirming 21 st century organisations. Wordzworth.
Joy, M. (2010). Why we Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows. San Francisco: Conari Press
Long, S. (2015) Turning a Blind Eye to Climate Change, in Organisational & Social Dynamics 15(2) Melbourne, pp. 248–262
Lovelock, J. (2009). The Vanishing Face of Gai. A Final Warning. London: Penguin Books.
Mann, C. (2018). Vystopia. The anguish of being vegan in a non-vegan world. Sydney: Communicate31
Oppenlander, R. (2012). Comfortably Unaware: What we choose to eat is killing us and our planet. New York: Beaufort Books.
Ricard, M. (2016). A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion. Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Rust, M. J. (2020) Towards an Ecopsychotherapy. London, Confer Books.
Safron Foer, J. (2009). Eating Animals. London: Penguin Books.
Scharmer, C.O. (2016) Theory U, Leading from the Future as It Emerges, United States: Random House, Edition 2
Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation (1 st ed). New York: Harper Collins.
Smith, K. (2019) The Abundance-Scarcity Paradox. USA: Outskirts Press.
Stacey, R. (2010) Complexity and Organizational Reality: Uncertainty and the Need to Rethink Management after the Collapse of Investment Capitalism. UK, Routledge; 2nd edition.
Steiner, J. (1999) Turning a Blind Eye. The Cover Up for Oedipus, in Bell, D. (editor) Psychoanalysis and Culture. A Kleinian Perspective. Gerard Duckworth & Co. Ltd. London., pp 86 – 102
Wheatley, M. (2006). Leadership and the New Science. Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Western, S. (2019). Leadership: A Critical Text. United Kingdom. Footprint Books
The psycho-dynamics of human animal connections: Prof Susan Long & Margo Lockhart
AUD $2,400 for eight live interactive online two-and-half-hour sessions
Early-bird special price AUD $2,100 before 31 August
This is fully interactive and online. The commitment is for eight, two-hour-and-half hour sessions. A certificate of completion will be given to participants who complete the course.

Starting Wednesday 5 October
6 – 8.30 pm 🇨🇰 Melbourne
3 – 5.30 am (eek!) 🇺🇸 New York
7 – 9.30 am 🇬🇧 London
9 – 11.30 am 🇿🇦 South Africa
12.30 – 3 pm 🇮🇳 New Delhi
3 – 5.30 pm 🇸🇬 Singapore
Please note, there are time zone shifts during these sessions to daylight savings and wintertime, so the session times do vary.
The time listed below is set to calculate the first start time depending on the time zone of your computer. The first session will start at:
time start
The psycho-dynamics of human animal connections
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Professor Susan Long
Psycho-dynamics of human-animal connections
Susan Long is a Melbourne based organisational consultant and executive coach. Previously, Professor of Creative and Sustainable Organisation at RMIT University, she is now a Professor and Director of Research at the National Institute for Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA) and a coach and consultant in private practice. She is an associate of the University of Melbourne Executive Programs and teaches at INSEAD in Singapore and the University of Divinity in Melbourne where she is involved in a coaching program.
Susan has consulted to organisational change in the health and justice sectors and coached senior executives across many sectors. She has worked with executives from many different nationalities and from diverse industries, having taught or consulted in the UK, the USA, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Israel, Thailand and Singapore. Susan also works as a supervisor and coach for organisational development professionals in Australia and Singapore. She has over 35 years of experience with Group Relations, having been on staff or directed many conferences.
Susan has been in a leadership position in many professional organisations and
has published ten books and many articles in books and scholarly journals, is General Editor of the journal Socioanalysis and an Associate Editor with Organisational and Social Dynamics. She is a member of the Advisory Board for Mental Health at Work with Comcare and a past member of the Board of the Judicial College of Victoria (2011-2016). Susan is a distinguished member of ISPSO.

Margo Lockhart
Psycho-dynamics of human-animal connections
Margo Lockhart is a highly regarded facilitator, designer and coach with a deserved reputation for developing trust and rapport in the working environment. She regularly facilitates management and leadership programs, as well as courses in Emotional Intelligence, Team Dynamics and Influencing Skills. With an academic background in education, counselling and organisational dynamics, Margo brings a disciplined and reflective focus to her work.
Margo’s academic focus combines her extensive experience in leadership development and group dynamics with her love of animals and her interest in sustainability. Her doctorate work is in the ‘social politics of meat’, an exploration of what is talked about, and not talked about, concerning the animals we raise and consume. She has a particular interest in the ‘meat paradox’- the fact that we can both love and eat animals, and the cognitive dissonance and dissociation this entails. She is also an experienced board director, having spent 10 years on the boards of various environmental groups.
When & Where
NIODA Pyscho-dynamics of human animal connections: Eight week live interactive online course with Professor Susan Long & Margo Lockhart
📆 Dates
Wednesdays 5 October – 23 November 2022
⏰. Session Times
6 – 8.30 pm 🇨🇰 Melbourne
3 – 5.30 am (eek!) 🇺🇸 New York
7 – 9.30 am 🇬🇧 London
9 – 11.30 am 🇿🇦 South Africa
12.30 – 3 pm 🇮🇳 New Delhi
3 – 5.30 pm 🇸🇬 Singapore
Due to changes in different countries for daylight savings, summertime, wintertime there will be variations.
💷 For only
AUD $2,400 including; all eight two-hour-and-half hour sessions; weekly readings, and critical discussions with limited participant numbers
Early-bird special price AUD $2,100 until 31 August
👩🏻💻. Location
Live interactive online sessions via Zoom
About NIODA
The National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA) offers internationally renowned post-graduate education and research in organisation dynamics, and decades of experience consulting with Australian organisations.
The study of organisation dynamics brings together socio-technical and psychoanalytic disciplines to explore the unconscious dynamics that exist in every group, team or organisation. Learning more about these theories, and reflecting on the experience of them, can support leaders and managers to unlock great potential in their organisations, tackling issues through a whole new light.
Get In Touch
Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.
Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.
At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.
Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.
The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.
Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership
The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.
The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.
Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.
Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience
Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.
We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.
It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.
As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.
Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise
I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?
When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.
My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.
Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities
Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*
It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this, ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’, Learn more here.
PO Box 287, Collins Street West,
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info@nioda.org.au
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Emerging Leadership: cometh the moment, cometh the leader.
Popular literature and human dependence promote the idea of The Leader, someone who can be relied on to show us the way. As if The Leader is always a leader. Some individuals are able to manipulate this wish and convince others that they have some special quality which makes them a person to follow in all circumstances. However, the evidence of history is that successful leadership is always circumstantial, regardless of whether history judges the outcomes to be good or bad. Such circumstances are a combination of the social forces that originate outside the person and the unique capacities that emerge from within the person at the right time.
At this time in Australia, we have a pending referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. We have official ‘leaders’ seeking followership, The Prime Minister (Yes) and the Leader of the Opposition (No). Both the individuals occupying these roles are currently regarded as uninspiring, just playing politics, not really mobilising others to identify with the possibilities of change.
Formally they are regarded as ‘leaders’ but on this issue, they are just politicians. The historical moment, which neither of them can claim to have shaped, is searching for a person or group who/which can connect the historically determined circumstance to the lived experience of those who will decide Yes or No through their vote.
The vacuum of leadership on this issue is not surprising because neither formal ‘leader’ can point to any convincing personal appreciation of what is at stake. Nothing is emerging at the top level; it is all about fixed arguments, ‘righting historical wrongs’ versus ‘threats to the constitution that has served us so well’.
Navigating Ambiguity: The Essence of Emerging Leadership
The notion of ‘emerging leadership’ is that it is a dynamically contingent relationship between what capacity an individual or group can find within themselves and how this speaks to the challenges others experience about which path to follow. We don’t need a leader if the choice is clear; then we only need an administrator or manager who decides the way forward based on some established criterion; a way that is tried and true, efficient, technically feasible, politically correct, evidence-based etc.
The emergent leader actually embraces an ambivalent situation and can look inward to discern an aspect of their being that connects to the deliberation about possibilities; and on the basis of that reflection argues for this way rather than that way, regardless of the formal position they hold, whilst mindful of the values of those they seek to influence.
Emergent leadership can be an everyday occurrence, not necessarily one of national and historical importance.
Discovering Leadership Through Personal Experience
Some years ago, working as an organisational consultant, I was persuaded by an acquaintance to offer assistance to her sister’s small business. Having started a fashion design business from her parent’s garage, this young woman had, with the unpaid help of her husband, achieved enough sales to employ another sister with marketing expertise and then, following further business growth, was needing to hire the first employee from outside the family. She wanted help in conducting the selection process such that this critical decision would enhance her growing enterprise whilst not threatening its family values. She had never used a consultant before, was appropriately dubious about the cost, and asked me if I knew anything about small business. I replied in the negative since all my consulting had been with larger entities.
We negotiated a sliding scale contract that would limit her risk depending upon the value she determined I was providing. She was really trusting her sister’s recommendation that I would be worth the expenditure. And I was impressed by her practical common sense.
It took two meetings between the sisters and me before I emerged as a leader in this circumstance.
As I reflected on my experience with the two sisters, of what was being said and not said and how this made me feel, I suddenly could not believe that I had told the client and myself that I did not know much about small business. When my conscious mind relaxed enough, I recalled that I had actually grown up in a small business. My father and his brother had started a small business after WWII and run it for 40 years. My whole young life had been shaped by the vicissitudes of a small business but the ‘professional’, adult me had left that all behind. When I got back in touch with my early experience, including memories of all the financial precariousness that my parents had tried to shield us from, of interfamily dynamics, and the direct satisfaction that I saw my father gain from being valued by his customers, I was in a changed state of mind when talking to my small business client.
Navigating Complex Leadership Dynamics: Balancing Intuition and Expertise
I began listening and speaking from a different space. I became a quiet leader whose thoughts and suggestions were amplified by my intuitive understanding of the risks and excitements my client was trying to estimate and choose. She was a talented and ambitious designer, a start-up entrepreneur in a notoriously risky sector and she had young children. Whose needs would prevail? Could it be both/and?
When I undertook that assignment I was already a ‘senior’ in the world of leadership development but obviously still very humanly vulnerable to putting conscious ‘knowing’ ahead of ‘coming to know’ within a particular circumstance. The case revealed that my most relevant resources were in my lived experience rather than my formal knowledge. I had to ‘emerge’ as a leader in the particular circumstance so could I lead my client to articulate what she felt about bringing an outsider into her business; a business that was outgrowing the family.
My sudden remembering of a past I had ‘forgotten’ is what Freud meant by getting in touch with the unconscious. In the consultation I did not need to explore why I had repressed my early experience, it was enough to embrace the creative lead it gave me into the current circumstance. It gave me a voice that was missing up until that point. A voice that was sufficiently authentic for my client to take it seriously.
Cultivating Emerging Leadership: Unveiling Personal Experience for Future Possibilities
Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
So I now argue that a critical aspect of leadership development is a process of helping individuals to recover the resources that exist within their own experience. This is different from developing an administrator, manager or executive who is rightly expected to have requisite knowledge and skills for the job they are employed to do. Leadership is not a fixed position. The need for leadership emerges and it can be offered by those who have some insight into future possibilities; possibilities that can connect the known to the unknown. We cannot be trained to do that but we can be primed to do it, if we learn to reflect in an intentional way to recall, to recognise and to harvest our past experiences as a resource for the future.*
It is quite possible that neither the Prime Minister nor the Leader of the Opposition have the internal resources to inspire a future for the Indigenous Voice but that does not mean such leadership will not emerge. Leadership does not belong to a formal role; it finds a voice of its own.
*My colleagues at NIODA are offering a leadership development workshop to encourage just this, ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’. Learn more here.