Approche socioclinique de la souffrance au travail1

Suffering at work has become a major social phenomena. This situation has many causes: high performance enhancement, urgency seen as an obligation, pressure for results, but also fear, and the soaring of ‘the battle for places’ (la lutte des places). The psychopathological consequences of pressure at work are now well known: breakdowns, professional exhaustion, work addiction, burnout, harassment. Stress has become an ordinary tool for management. Employees cannot find a meaning to this context, nor can they identify the causes of their ill being or the reasons for the violence they endure. They confront an opaque and paradoxical power. Looking for solutions to the contradictions to which management has given rise without resolving, they become responsible for those difficulties and guilty of their own suffering. These are ‘innocent violences’ in so far as they are justified by an indisputable system of management.