Work/pysche

Some are fed up with work: others wish they had a job. Some have given it up; others already know that they’ll get fired again soon. Some saw their fathers die in the traces, so they themselves stop, right when it’s time to embark on a career. Whether they work in the public sector or in a private office, everyone talks and wonders about their jobs so much that our relationship with work seems to be as personal as a love affair or grief. Is work a psychological matter? We shall review Freud’s concepts of “dream work,” “joke work,” and “the work of mourning,” as a preliminary to our to-and-fro journey between work and the psyche. A clinical illustration drawn from the novel La Modification, by Michel Butor, will help us understand elements that feed the psyche at work.