When I can’t do it anymore….

Until recently, the delivery room of a maternity ward was called the “labor room”. It is quite true that labor is at stake in a birth. Labor, or work, leads to three types of gratification: of oneself, in what one does, of others, via the object being exchanged, and of oneself as one’s own referent. Current work-related pathologies are closely linked to flaws in these gratification mechanisms. Two factors are illustrated: emotional resonance and the impossible belonging.