(Dés)organisations du travail et décompensations cancéreuses : éclairage psychanalytique

Context

This article is the result of a doctoral research that proposes to question the possible links between the suffering at work caused by managerial practices stemming from neoliberalism and the occurrence of somatic disorders in the individual.

Objectives

More and more studies reveal links between work organization/conditions and somatic decompensation, including severe. In the continuity, we propose to reflect on the psychic stakes mobilized in certain forms of cancerous pathologies in subjects invested professionally.

Method

Following the work psychodynamicians who place work as central in the life of the subject, the authors sought to understand how work can be structuring for the subject and what psychic functions it has in his life. The authors also analyzed, through the analysis of several clinical situations, what is at play in the work for the individual, what keeps his balance both psychically and somatically and what, on the contrary, can “destroy” it (in the literal sense of the term).

Results

The case studies showed that, out of twenty subjects interviewed, constants appeared: these subjects tended to avoid conflicts because of their inability to treat them psychically resulting in repression, inhibition of their affects, especially those of anger or hostility. This disability has its origin in their childhood history and in the pre-western trauma experienced in the primary relationship with the mother.

Interpretations

The authors have highlighted the effects of (ob)scenalization in the work implying that the highly invested subject projects, plays or acts his intimate scene on the professional scene and on the metaexecutives of the institution that perform various functions (metadefensive instance, subject affiliation and violent impulse movement capacity). It follows that a failing institution causes the bankruptcy of this metaframework and the psychic elements formerly contained and/or metabolized are likely to return to the subject in the form of severe somatization. The limits of this study lie in the small number of subjects interviewed and in the impossibility of generalizing such processes due to the multifactorial complexity involved. Neoliberalism at work in societal evolutions invites us to continue these investigations on the deleterious effects of this on the health of professionals.