The psychodynamic analysis of work

John Marks

doi:10.1080/09639489.2019.1702938

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the psychodynamic analysis of work associated primarily with Christophe Dejours. It explores briefly the roots of psychodynamics in the psychopathology of work that emerged as a field in France in the 1950s. It then goes on to look at the ways in which psychodynamics has proposed a critical framework for analysing the damaging consequences of isolation, atomisation and the erosion of collective solidarity in the neoliberal era. One of the central premises of psychodynamics is the idea that ‘real’ work often remains invisible. Work is, in this sense, enigmatic, since the investments made by individuals in their work may be expressed in drives and forms of sublimation of which they are not consciously aware. Psychodynamics has been criticised for being complicit with managerial agendas that seek to promote wellbeing with the ulterior motive of depoliticising the workplace. However, psychodynamics is not a ‘victimology’, and Dejours has raised important questions about work as both a subjective experience and as the main socialising force in contemporary society.

Highlights

There has been a good deal of research and writing about work and work-related issues in France in recent times
This article will consider the ways in which psychodynamics, mediated primarily through the work of Christophe Dejours and associated clinicians and researchers,1 has had a considerable impact on thinking and public discourse on work in France in recent years, introducing a new vocabulary of ‘souffrance’, ‘plaisir’ and ‘reconnaissance’
Le problème alors est de trouver des égaux avec qui peut se constituer une action rationnelle de résistance. (Lhuilier 2009: 230). In his recent book The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought (2019) Alastair Hemmens emphasises what he sees as the importance of the distinction between two ways of approaching the critique of work

Summary

Introduction

There has been a good deal of research and writing about work and work-related issues in France in recent times. Sublimation can provide recognition and pleasure, but it can be diverted, disrupted or even negated in work It is not so much the case that employees internalise the desires of the company, but rather that the effect of managerialism is frequently to channel the drives of the working subject in potentially harmful and self-destructive ways. There was a certain degree of social interaction outside of work, Dejours describes this as merely a ‘strategic conviviality’: a way of jockeying for position within the company by building relationships with individuals who are identified as influential within the organisation He goes so far as to say that this situation constitutes a new type of social configuration: a distinctive form of self-imposed conformity and ‘servitude’ that results in a conspiracy of silence. She undoubtedly could have capitulated and left the company, but such a disinvestment on her part would have forced her to confront the fact that her subjective investment in the company was worthless: that she had been deceived by the company and that she had deceived herself

Psychodynamics as social theory

Findings

Conclusion