Defensive strategies against psychic suffering among workers

Abstract

This article is meant to consist in a contribution towards worker’s mental health understanding. To achieve this goal, we tried to briefly present, as background scenery, the context of work from a historical perspective. The expansion of the capitalist model, in the second half of the 20th century, engendered a progressive increase in the number of average working hours per worker and a continuous increase in time expenditure related to work issues, which seem to be issues that caused tangible effects on workers general health. This work has tried to pursue an evaluation of the successful worker profile, seeing suffering as a relatable presence in his or her working context and, as Dejours and Nietzsche tragically realize, in the understanding of suffering as an unavoidable and inherent feature of life. Besides that, the present article sought to understand precisely how these authors relate themselves with the perception of suffering within working organizational context and how they relate to defensive strategies aimed at mitigating it - which may bring dubious results given that they may either increase or decrease workers mental health condition. Finally, the present study emphasizes the importance of professionals capable of critical thinking and, also, of a working space that enables the perception of suffering process as a form of making mental health equilibrium achievable to the average worker. The research methods of choice were qualitative analysis review of bibliographic sources, and the adopted theoretical framework was technically related with literature in the fields of Psychodynamics of Work and Philosophy. The established result is that pain and suffering are meant to be understood as something inherent to every form of work activity that has a defining character in worker’s subjectivity.