The Advisor as Invited Intruder.

This article presents a psychodynamic perspective on the relationship between an administrator and an advisor. The article examines ways in which bureaucratic incentive systems in which administrators work, as well as the advising relationship itself, contribute to an ambivalence toward an advisor. This ambivalence is expressed in a desire simultaneously to find that the adviser is powerful and to render the advisor impotent. The analysis forecasts on ways in which the advisor's status as outsider, perceived as that of intruder, contributes to efforts to withhold information from the advisor, to discredit the advisor's competence, to sabotage the advisor's recommendations, and to scapegoat the advisor. All advising relationships contain the potential for such efforts, and effective advising depends on a recognition of and response to this potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]