Christophe Dejours

Subjetividade, trabalho e ação

This paper produces some issues for debate on the relationships between work and subjectivity. Under this perspective, work implies, from a human point of view, the fact of working: gestures, know-how, a commitment of the body, the mobilization of intelligence, the ability to reflect, to interpret and to react to situations; it is the power of feeling, of thinking and of inventing. Actual work is always affectively manifested to the subject, whereby a primordial distress relationship is established, experienced by the subject, embodied. To work is to fill the gap between the prescribed and the real. This is why an important part of the effective work remains in the shade, and cannot, therefore, be assessed. Another question concerns the agreements built by workers within the collective of a team or of a job, which always present a double vectorization: from the one hand, a work efficacy and quality goal; on the other hand, a social goal. A discussion of the psychodynamics of work theory is also proposed, where the work centrality is one of their pillars as well as the psychoanalytical theory, where this issue is not directly approached.

Subjectivity, Work, and Action

Abstract This essay is intended to explore relations between work and subjectivity (that is, what concerns the individual subject: his or her suffering, pleasure, personal development, and so on). To this end, we shall draw on a body of theory and clinical practice that has been developing in France for some twenty years under the name of the ‘psychodynamics of work’ and ask the three following questions. What is work? This question might seem trivial, but the clinical analysis of the relationship between work and subjectivity shows that work is inseparable from suffering. Working inevitably means experiencing failure—in terms of ones know-how, technique and control of the work process. Is suffering simply an unfortunate consequence of work? We shall attempt to show that in fact it is also at the origin of intelligence and ingeniousness. Which subjectivity? Assuming that we recognise what work owes to subjectivity, we must also reverse the question and ask ourselves what subjectivity (individual development) owes to work. We shall attempt to show that work constitutes a decisive challenge for subjectivity, one that can enhance that subjectivity (self-fulfilment) or, conversely, destroy it (mental pathology). Here, we shall evoke the questions raised by mental pathologies generated by the new forms of work organisation. Subjectivity between work and action? Work is not simply an individual experience. We always work for someone. Working always means encountering others in social relations, or in other words, relations of domination and servitude. Under what conditions do men and women who work agree to cooperate with each other? What conditions allow us to ward off the violence threatening to emerge from the social relations of work? Work offers what is perhaps the most ordinary opportunity to learn about living together (in Aristotles sense) and democracy. But it can also give rise to the worst—the instrumentalisation of human beings and barbarity.

Psicodinâmica do trabalho e teoria da sedução

What are the relationships between the malaise affecting the world of work today, and the Malaise in culture, analyzed by Freud (1930/2002). Patients apparently talk much more today of suffering at work than before. Is it necessary to mobilize specific theoretical references in order to listen to them? Beyond these issues, what we will take into considerations here is what psychoanalysis can therefore bring to the interpretation of data obtained in the field of clinical work. We discuss the forms of organizations of work - between what is prescribed and what actually takes place - and its implications for the scope of psychodynamics of work and mental health.

Work and Self-Development

Abstract A subject’s relationship with work is by no means “neutral” as regards selfdevelopment. What becomes of the psychical (or subjective) relationship with work does not depend solely on the individual’s particular characteristics as a person, in particular their gender; it depends also on the nature and organization of work. In order to analyse the importance of work in the development of the psychic erotic economics, I refer to the psychotherapy of a young woman that took place towards the end of her adolescence. This will enable me to show how work can have a positive impact on mental development. Then, in order to illustrate how work may destroy mental functioning, I briefly analyse examples taken from investigations I undertook in France in companies where several workplace suicides had taken place.

Psychodynamics of work and the seduction theory

What are the relationships between the malaise affecting the world of work today, and the Malaise in culture, analyzed by Freud (1930/2002). Patients apparently talk much more today of suffering at work than before. Is it necessary to mobilize specific theoretical references in order to listen to them? Beyond these issues, what we will take into considerations here is what psychoanalysis can therefore bring to the interpretation of data obtained in the field of clinical work. We discuss the forms of organizations of work - between what is prescribed and what actually takes place - and its implications for the scope of psychodynamics of work and mental health.

La souffrance au travail: révélateur des transformations de la société française

ABSTRACT This article will attempt to recount the history of the emergence of this theme of ‘la souffrance au travail’, highlighting its role in laying bare transformations and fault lines in French society today. The article will explain this role by providing a detailed description of the ‘managerialist turn’ and the new methods of management that characterise it. It will show how such methods transform relationships between employees, eroding links of cooperation, solidarity, and collaborative life. These corrosive effects seem to confirm the hypothesis of the ‘centrality of work’ in the formation of the polity and of citizens. The article will examine the controversies sparked by this hypothesis of ‘the centrality of work’, detailing the hostilities it has provoked, as much amongst the trades unions as amongst academics, before emphasising the role played by artists, filmmakers, writers, legal experts, and journalists who have managed to put work at the centre of public debates in France. By way of conclusion, the article will try to explain why this has proved to be the case in France more than elsewhere.

13 – Travail et santé mentale

Resume Ce chapitre vise a presenter les concepts permettant de rendre intelligible les rapports entretenus entre travail et sante mentale. Apres avoir retrace succinctement l’heritage des recherches pionnieres en psychopathologie du travail, il s’agira d’evoquer le corpus theorique actuel de la psychodynamique du travail. La psychodynamique du travail est une methode clinique d’analyse du rapport subjectif au travail, qui se refere a la psychanalyse et s’est developpee grâce a la confrontation avec d’autres disciplines. Dans un second temps, nous degagerons certaines entites psychopathologiques liees a l’evolution des methodes d’organisation du travail, telles qu’elles ont ete identifiees dans la litterature recente. Enfin, nous degagerons les implications de la psychodynamique du travail, en retour, sur la theorie psychanalytique, et en particulier sur le concept de sublimation.

Psicodinámica del trabajo y teoria de la seducción

What are the relationships between the malaise affecting the world of work today, and the Malaise in culture, analyzed by Freud (1930/2002). Patients apparently talk much more today of suffering at work than before. Is it necessary to mobilize specific theoretical references in order to listen to them? Beyond these issues, what we will take into considerations here is what psychoanalysis can therefore bring to the interpretation of data obtained in the field of clinical work. We discuss the forms of organizations of work - between what is prescribed and what actually takes place - and its implications for the scope of psychodynamics of work and mental health.

Acidentes da sedução e teoria do corpo

This works starts by presenting a clinical fragment highlighting an episode of acute somatic decompensating in a patient whose psychic functioning suggests neither psychosis nor a case of what is conventionally referred to as psychosomatic disorder. We then aim to grasp the complexity of such a phenomenon from a metapsychological standpoint and, in particular, question the relationship between somatic crisis, psychotic crisis, and sexuality. Next, we make use of the concept of intromission of the sexual message, such as formulated by Jean Laplanche, in order to rearrange it and approach it as an accident of seduction to be comprehended as a radical untranslated with narrow connections to primal inscriptions, stamped in the child’s body and proscribed from psyche, originating the amential unconscious. Lastly, we indicates that the possibility of repatriating these proscribed inscriptions depends on a singular psychic work, carried out by the patient him/herself, in the fashion of a working-through brought about by dreaming.This works starts by presenting a clinical fragment highlighting an episode of acute somatic decompensating in a patient whose psychic functioning suggests neither psychosis nor a case of what is conventionally referred to as psychosomatic disorder. We then aim to grasp the complexity of such a phenomenon from a metapsychological standpoint and, in particular, question the relationship between somatic crisis, psychotic crisis, and sexuality. Next, we make use of the concept of intromission of the sexual message, such as formulated by Jean Laplanche, in order to rearrange it and approach it as an accident of seduction to be comprehended as a radical un- translated with narrow connections to primal inscriptions, stamped in the childs body and proscribed from psyche, originating the amential unconscious. Lastly, we indicates that the possibility of repatriating these proscribed inscriptions depends on a singular psychic work, carried out by the patient him/herself, in the fashion of a working-through brought about by dreaming.

Accidentes de la seducción y teoria del cuerpo

This works starts by presenting a clinical fragment highlighting an episode of acute somatic decompensating in a patient whose psychic functioning suggests neither psychosis nor a case of what is conventionally referred to as psychosomatic disorder. We then aim to grasp the complexity of such a phenomenon from a metapsychological standpoint and, in particular, question the relationship between somatic crisis, psychotic crisis, and sexuality. Next, we make use of the concept of intromission of the sexual message, such as formulated by Jean Laplanche, in order to rearrange it and approach it as an accident of seduction to be comprehended as a radical untranslated with narrow connections to primal inscriptions, stamped in the child’s body and proscribed from psyche, originating the amential unconscious. Lastly, we indicates that the possibility of repatriating these proscribed inscriptions depends on a singular psychic work, carried out by the patient him/herself, in the fashion of a working-through brought about by dreaming.This works starts by presenting a clinical fragment highlighting an episode of acute somatic decompensating in a patient whose psychic functioning suggests neither psychosis nor a case of what is conventionally referred to as psychosomatic disorder. We then aim to grasp the complexity of such a phenomenon from a metapsychological standpoint and, in particular, question the relationship between somatic crisis, psychotic crisis, and sexuality. Next, we make use of the concept of intromission of the sexual message, such as formulated by Jean Laplanche, in order to rearrange it and approach it as an accident of seduction to be comprehended as a radical un- translated with narrow connections to primal inscriptions, stamped in the childs body and proscribed from psyche, originating the amential unconscious. Lastly, we indicates that the possibility of repatriating these proscribed inscriptions depends on a singular psychic work, carried out by the patient him/herself, in the fashion of a working-through brought about by dreaming.