‘The Return of the Primal Father’ in Postmodernity? A Lacanian Analysis of Authentic Leadership

A significant stream of research taking a psychoanalytic perspective has focused on leadership in organizations. Studies have investigated, from a Freudian perspective, leader–follower relations where the leader represents a domineering and authoritarian father figure. We contribute to this research by introducing Lacanian theory to explore the increasingly influential ‘authentic leadership’ approach. In contrast to traditional leadership, this approach advocates, in line with postmodern trends, a post-heroic, non-authoritarian and even self-effacing leader figure. In analysing academic and practitioner-oriented authentic leadership texts we ask, drawing on Lacanian insights, whether authentic leadership enables subjects to separate from the master discourse of traditional leadership through promoting something like the analyst discourse, or whether it entails the return of a phantasmagorical Freudian primal father figure, leading to heightened dependency. In so doing, we discuss the political significance of Lacanian theory in illuminating possibilities for more autonomous and emancipatory relations in organizations.