Clinique du travail et incidences subjectives de la propagande

Abstract

ContextThis article offers an analysis of contemporary forms of propaganda in the light of the clinical approach of work. Native to the exercise of democracy, propaganda ranges from capitalism to present-day neoliberalism. The aim of this article is to understand the effects of propaganda in the light of suffering at work. The authors analyze the way in which propaganda and its specific variations within contemporary work organizations participate of a social imaginary, disseminated by company communication techniques, and how this social imaginary in return affects the psychic life of the subjects. MethodThis discussion is based on the clinical method of the psychodynamics of work; a discipline built in an interdisciplinary dialogue between the labor sciences and psychoanalysis. The presentation of clinical elements drawn from a consultation of psychopathology of work puts in visibility the psychic incidences of the communication of company and of the techniques of influence on the one hand, to carry out an investigation of the psychopathological consequences of the neoliberal labor organizations. ResultsThe results show that the productions of the social imaginary proceed from the narrowing of spaces open to sublimation, but also that the defensive strategies to fight against suffering help to reduce the work of thought. ConclusionThese effects are made possible by the recourse to dominant ideological contents and contribute to adhesion and submission to “managerial skills” as well as communicational distortion.