Deranty_What is work. Key insights from the psychodynamics of work

8/7/2019 Deranty_What is work. Key insights from the psychodynamics of work.

1/30

What is work? Key insights from the psychodynamics of work.

Abstract: This paper aims to present some of the main results of contemporary

French psychodynamics of work. The writings of Christophe Dejours constitute the

central references in this area. His psychoanalytical approach, which is initially

concerned with the impact of contemporary work practices on individual health, has

implications that go well beyond the narrow psychopathological interest. The most

significant theoretical development to have come out Dejourss research is that of

Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute the second reference point in this paper. The

paper attempts to demonstrate that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot

operate with, as a result of their focus on its psychological function, speaks directly,

in substantial and critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in work, to

philosophers, social theorists and social scientists, including economic theorists.

Keywords: Work. Psychoanalysis. Dejours. Clot.

This paper aims to present some of the main results of a strand of research in

the psychology of work currently pursued in France at the Conservatoire National des

Arts et Mtiers in Paris. The originality and richness of this approach harbours

tremendous theoretical potentials that allow us to revisit some of the key issues

associated with work. The writings of Christophe Dejours constitute the central

references in this area. His psychoanalytical approach, which is initially concerned

strictly with the impact of contemporary work practices on individual health, in fact

has implications that go well beyond the narrow psychopathological interest. These

broad implications make it a serious dialogue partner for all the social sciences

interested in issues of work. The most significant theoretical development to have

come out Dejourss research is that of Yves Clot, whose writings will constitute the

1


2/30

second reference point in this paper. Dejours uses a psychoanalytical approach,

focusing on the impact of work experiences on the subjective economy of working

individuals. As a result, his model is more accurately described as a psychodynamics,

rather than as a psychology, of work. Since Dejours is the one who has opened new

ground in this area, in particular by articulating contributions stemming from a variety

of disciplines (anthropology, sociology, ergonomics, philosophy, and of course,

psychoanalysis), I will continue to refer to this strand as a psychodynamics of work

despite the fact that Yves Clots core references are psychological, rather than

psychoanalytical.i

The definition of work remains a serious theoretical problem today. It is a

classical conundrum in sociology (Grint, 1991). It is also an area in philosophy where

progress has stalled since Arendt (1958) and Habermas (1974) turned their backs on

work as being incompatible with, or at least indifferent to, individual and political

freedom, and they offered conceptions of work that reflected this philosophical

demotion. Today the area suffers from added conceptual confusion since economic

theory, operating with an ultra-thin definition of work, has come to occupy a position

of quasi-hegemony in policy debates and is pressing its claim for sole authority in the

other social sciences, without, however, making other approaches to work irrelevant.

The paper aims to suggest that the thick definition of work that Dejours and Clot

operate with, as a result of their focus on its psychological function, speaks directly,

in substantial and critical ways, to all disciplines with an interest in work, to

philosophers, social theorists and social scientists, and also, perhaps, to economic

theorists.

Dejourss definition of work (2002: 43) is borrowed from ergonomics, notably

from the ground-breaking research of Alain Wisner (1995).ii

It reads as follows:

2


3/30

Work is the coordinated activity deployed by men and women in order to

face that which, in a utilitarian task, cannot be obtained through the strict application

of the prescribed organisation.

Yves Clot (2004: 98) borrows from Dejours this conception of work, defining

it in his turn as directed activity that must be taken in a three-fold sense: directed

towards others, by the subject, through the object.

The paper starts by clarifying the broad theoretical premisses underpinning

this approach to work (part 1). This foundation is secured by reference to the

anthropology and ethnology of techniques, an area of anthropology which allows

Dejours and Clot to avoid abstractions and dualisms and helps them to articulate the

three essential dimensions of subjectivity, technique and society. The paper then

studies successively the three aspects of work: the instrumental, prescriptive aspect of

work (part 2); the part of the subject, and the significance of workplaces understood

as specific lifeworlds (part 3).

1. A triangular definition of work.

A crucial result of the French psychology of work is the importance of each the three

poles in the definition of work, as moments of equal constitutive and normative

importance. This encompassing view which stresses the necessity to articulate

together the moments of the subject, the object and the intersubjective, is made

possible precisely by the focus on the impact of the working experience on the life of

the subject.

This approach is a safeguard against reductionist approaches to work, of the

kind for example propagated by the philosophers mentioned above, who only consider

work from functional and instrumental perspectives. Outside philosophy, in the social

3


4/30

sciences, the interest on work as a subjective experience provides a critical

perspective against cognitivist approaches that reduce work to the technical adaptation

of a working subject to the task at hand. It is precisely because they start from a

clinical interest in the ways in which work impacts on, and matters to, subjects, that

Dejours and Clot are then able to highlight its much broader social and cultural

dimensions. Conversely, the integrated definition of work also provides a critical

standpoint against culturalist and intersubjectivistic approaches, as they can be found

for example in the sociology of work. The definition of work constructed through the

perspective of its psychological function keeps an eye on the irreducible technical

dimension of work , as a dimension of central normative significance. A symmetric

correction occurs regarding the instrumental and the technical dimensions as with the

social and the cultural: the technical is not a dimension that can be abstracted from,

even in discussions concerned only with the macro-sociological or micro-

organisational aspects of work.

Accordingly, the formal schema underlying any conception of work needs to

be a triangular one, and not just a bipolar one, as in cognitivist definitions in terms of

subject-task or in organisational approaches in terms of subject-organisation, or more

broadly, when work is taken as employment, in the relation of the worker(s) to the

social order. The whole conceptual and methodological difficulty resides in this

necessity to integrate the three dimensions coherently. The complexity arises from the

fact that none of the three dimensions is the ultimate one, and each is mediated by the

others. To help clarify this, we can anticipate on a point developed in the next section:

the technical order is indeed framed by the social-cultural context, for example in the

definition of what counts as an efficient act. Conversely, however, there is a specific

social significance to the technical, which is different from the general social-cultural

4


5/30

determinacy. Technique creates its own form of sociality. This dimension is

especially important to highlight as it is typically ignored in normatively minded

discussions on work.

This approach to work, which assumes that the psychological, the technical

and the cultural cannot be separated, whatever ones specific disciplinary interest

might be, has its theoretical foundation in the ethnological and anthropological

literature devoted to the study of the interactions between techniques and culture.

Dejours and Clot could be said to propose an extension and an application, from a

phenomenological angle and for clinical purposes, of a French tradition of

anthropological and sociological literature which consistently stresses the interplay

between the subjective, the cultural and the technical (Faure, 2001), the tradition

stretching from Mauss (1979) and Leroi-Gourhan (1993) to Haudricourt (1990),

Latour (2002) and Stiegler (2006).

Within that tradition, it is an article by Franois Sigaut (1990) in particular

which helped Dejours formalise the triadic structure through which the

psychodynamic of work can conduct precise analyses of the interaction of subjective,

social and technical dimensions in the work activity. This scheme formalises and

elaborates on Marcel Mausss (1979) three-pole definition of bodily technique as a

traditional, efficient act. The methodological move made by Dejours consists in

starting from a broad anthropological understanding of techniques, which highlights

the social and cultural dimensions of technical use. On the basis of this social-cultural

analysis of technical use, work can then be defined in a substantive way as a form of

technical use constrained by its inclusion in the economic logic. The initial formal

scheme to approach work as a complex phenomenon is thus the following:

5


6/30

REAL

EGO OTHERS

The Ego-Real axis indicates the moment of the act properly speaking. This is

indeed an instrumental moment. However, seen from the perspective of the subject, it

is more precisely the moment where the subject in action faces the challenges of the

instrumental task. There is never full transparency between instrumental prescriptions

and the subject putting them in practice. This dimension that is true of all technical

activity is most notably true of the work activity.

The Real-Other axis denotes the efficiency of the act, an efficiency that is

instrumental of course, but also defined socially inasmuch as the efficiency of the

subjects act cannot be left to the sole judgement of the acting subject. Efficiency is

not an absolutely objective predicate, even if there are strong objective constraints to

it, but the product of a social judgement. This does not amount to a culturalist

dissolution of instrumental rationality. The objective constraints are indeed very

strong. But it is equally abstract to believe that instrumental rationality simply

imposes itself on the human agent independent of the social context. The notion of

instrumental judgement brings together the two dimensions of instrumental

constraints and socially formed and socially imposed judgment. When technical

activity is refined as work activity, that is, when the economic dimension is included,

the judgement of efficiency is doubled: beyond the purely technical dimension, made

concrete in the end product or the service provided, and measured by productivity and

quality, there is the utilitarian efficiency, the value created by the technical act, its

6


7/30

response to a social demand. This is the instrumentality resulting from the profit

motive: what was the social demand that triggered the production process?

Finally, the intersubjective relation is the side of the tradition (Mauss), the

cultural moment of technique, since a technique that would not be accepted in, and

defined through a culture would not make sense and would not be seen to produce

technical effects. Equally important in technique is the dimension of its transmission,

which is unconceivable if technique is not also considered as a social practice. The

specification of the activity, from general technical, to a work activity embedded in

the economy, puts the focus on the importance of the work collective. Indeed, the

working subject is socially integrated, first through the general division of labour, and

more specifically through the use of culturally defined techniques, through his or her

intervention in a specific technical world. But the cultural element of work is also a

third, more specific one. It points to the restricted yet highly significant community of

the work collective, the community of subjects who are related on the basis of their

knowledge and skill, the special knowledge of the specific techniques involved, which

no outsider can truly fathom. Here, Dejours argues (2002:60), the judgement on work

is a judgement of beauty: the acknowledgment the quality of the activity and its end

product can only be brought by the peers.

2. The pole of the object.

One of the most interesting aspects emphasised by the psychological approach to

work is the ambiguous process of depersonalisation that occurs in the work activity.

This process is ambiguous because it can be synonymous with domination,

misrecognition, and exploitation, or conversely, can also provide the conditions for

subjective fulfilment through work.

7


8/30

This aspect is most prominent in the experience by the subject of a world of

objective constraints. This is the dimension that corresponds to the Other-Real axis in

the triangle of work. In Dejourss interpretation of Mauss, this is the axis of the

social-cultural definition and transmission of instrumental and economic efficiency.

As we saw, economic efficiency is never a purely objective judgement that could be

severed from its cultural grounding. As a judgement, it is proffered and imposed by

socialised subjects on other subjects and, notwithstanding its objectual dimension, is

social and cultural in that sense. As Mauss demonstrated, the instrumentalist

dimension of human activity need not be severed from the cultural aspect, if only

because instrumental, utilitarian techniques are learnt and transmitted socially by

human subjects, notably through mimetic processes.

Insofar as the task is prescribed, and insofar as the prescriptions obey the logic

of teleology and instrumentality, the subject is confronted with what appears to be at

first a purely objective world. Even when the prescriptions are socially created and

imposed, elaborated by the work engineers and ergonomists, deriving from the

mechanical procedures created by the makers of the machines, linked with

administrative and organisational rules, and so on, and are imposed through the

complex of customer-hierarchy, even with all the intersubjectivity at play in this

realm, the norms governing this dimension are mainly instrumental, governed by the

aims of production: quality and quantity. This is typically the sphere where the

alienation of subjective life would seem to be unavoidable. The sphere of domination

is constituted by the networks of intersubjective relations, inside and outside the work

place, but the sphere of direct alienation, where the subject loses himself or herself as

subjectivity, would be here. In her encounter with the overpowering world of

technical norms, quantitative targets, instrumental regulations, procedures,

8


9/30

mechanisms, and so on, the working subject seems to lose herself. Images of rigid and

potentially pathogenic machines, work cadences and mechanic processes impose

themselves here. This is the domination of the object over the subject.

The immediate aim of the psychology of work is clinical, and so it is especially

concerned with all the possible pathogenic aspects of the work experience.

Conversely, however, it also points to the ambiguous nature of that experience and is

able to highlight the specific normative dimensions of the encounter with the

objective world.

The first insight of that kind concerns the impact for the working subject of his

inscription within the division of labour. The division of labour, of course, obeys a

logic that is strictly functional and instrumental: its aims are purely instrumental, to

produce commodities for exchange; and its organisation is purely functional. With

Plato (1991), social and political philosophy from the very beginning had highlighted

the functional and instrumental logic governing the division of labour. But with Plato

already, the moral implications of the division of labour had been identified, both in

terms of its impact on the subjects ethical life, and on the ethical quality of society

itself.

This is the point where Yves Clots analyses are invaluable, as he develops

historical and anthropological premises that are only implicit in Dejours. Clot

identifies three levels at which the inscription in the division of labour gives work a

decisive psychological function.

The first level relates to the psychological impact of the subjects inscription in

the social division of labour in its most general sense. This corresponds to the type of

social recognition studied by Axel Honneth (2003:140-41) under the notion of

performance principle, or Leistungsprinzip. This is the norm, arising with modern

9


10/30

society, according to which the subject asks to have her contribution to society

recognised. This is the recognition of the self, not as an equal bearer of rights, but as

an agent contributing in a specific way to the reproduction of society.

The point made by Clot bears similar traits to the German concept of

Leistungsprinzip. The decisive references, however, are no longer the social

behaviourist Mead, or contemporary sociology, but two classical authors in French

psychology, Henri Wallon (1930, 1947) and Ignace Meyerson (1948, 1987). Like

Honneth, Clot establishes a strong connection between normativity, subjective well-

being and the subjects inscription in the division of social labour. By contrast with

Honneth, however, Clot emphasises the material mediations through which this

inscription is effectuated, and how they impact on subjective well-being. Clot argues

that the depersonalising aspects of work are not necessarily alienating in the

pathological sense of the term, but can also play a structuring role for the subject. He

renders this idea by playing on the different meanings of occupation: by losing

herself in the working activity, the subject can deal in new ways with her pre-

occupations, the existential and psychological content of subjective life that

preoccupies but also literally precedes or lies outside the occupation. Here Clot

follows closely the work of the psychologists of work organisations Curie and Dupuy

(1994). Because of its depersonalising logic, due to the objective constraints that are

indifferent to the subjects idiosyncratic personality structure, work forces a

rearrangement of psychological life, which is not necessarily detrimental but can also

be a source of subjective liberation. Work from that perspective is seen normatively as

a potential educating factor as it forces upon the subject the challenge of facing

objective constraints and the highly specific social constraints associated with them

(orders, demands, expectations, and so on).

10


11/30

We might speculate that the psychological function of work consists in the

rupture it introduces between the personal preoccupations of the subject and the

social occupations he or she is required to accomplish (2004:65).

The subject is taken outside of herself through the work activity, but this distance

put between the self and her immediate physiological and affective life is not

necessarily an alienation in the pathological sense, it can well be an important, indeed

a necessary step in self-realisation. This is a process that can allow for an increase in

self-distantiation and reflexivity. The self-forgetting that is made possible through

the use of tools, the constraints of technical prescriptions and work processes can be a

process ofBildung.

If we focus further on the social dimension attached to the objective constraints,

similar arguments can be made; a potentially positive alienation can occur. By

working, the subject is forced to leave the idiosyncracy of subjective life and the

intimacy of family life and is thrown into wider society. She or he takes place in the

division of labour. It is precisely the fact that this social dimension is tightly attached

to objective imperatives obeying a functional logic that can have a liberating aspect. If

the rules governing the social world qua economic are objective, this can represent

a liberation from other social worlds structured around norms that can be, in some

cases, more rigid or inegalitarian. The strong functional and instrumental dimensions

of the subjects contribution to the division of labour, the fact that their contribution

can count beyond their other identity-features (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) can

potentially be a powerful medium of self-affirmation. The example of the integration

of women in the labour market during the two world-wars of the last century is a

11


12/30

paradigmatic example of this. An objective type of social recognition is at play here,

which undercuts other social value judgements

The centrifugal rhythms of social work and its technical and impersonal forms of

solidarity interfere with the preoccupations of the subject. As he or she realises her

or himself in them, these rhythms grant her or him independence towards others, they

protect him or her against the excision from the real. Thanks to the encounters that

they impose on the subject with an object obeying norms that are different from the

subjective norms, they give the subject back to herself or himself. Work is a

demarcation from oneself, inscription in a different history: a collective history

crystallised in social genres that are generally sufficiently equivocal and diverging to

allow and demand of each and everyone that they put in their own contribution

(mettre du sien) and get out of themselves. (2004:71)

Against objections that would criticise a naively dehistoricised reference to work,

Clots reference to historical psychology, and especially the writings of Henri Wallon

and Ignace Meyerson, function as a powerful rejoinder. Wallon and Meyerson had

studied in detail the shifts in the psychological function of work on the basis of an

anthropological understanding of its hominising and educating potential (Ignace

Meyerson, 1948, 1987. Henri Wallon, 1930). This dovetails with Leroi-Gouhrans

famous theses on the phylogenetic centrality of technical use. The anthropological

perspective reconnects with a historical perspective on the psychological function of

work. A third central reference could be mentioned here, outside of the French

tradition, but with very similar arguments concerning the decisive impact on the

subject of the inscription in the division of labour. I am thinking of Marcuses dual

account of work (1955: 128; 1988: 256): as alienated labour, work is the main

12


13/30

vector of surplus-repression, and so the utopia of emancipation requires an

overcoming of this toil, but on the other hand liberation also means liberated work,

and points to the potentially positive function of work for the subject when work fully

enables her to engage in socially necessary labour.

Together, these strands help to see how it is possible to maintain the argument that

work plays a central psychological function, without ignoring societal differentiation

and, as a result of it, the diversification of the modes of identity formation.

Accordingly, one would then say that it is precisely because individual life is now

pluralised as it is subject to diverging social logics, that work becomes all the more

central. As Clot puts it (1995:225-226; 2004:70), work can today be even more

central for subjects, precisely because it has lost its substantive central place in post-

industrial society.

It is precisely because life has differentiated its insertions, precisely because of

the decrease in mono-activity and the increase in biographical contingency that work

is all the more invested by subjects. They ask of work a lot more than before. In

particular, they demand of it to become a milieu where these lives can be invented.

Work is therefore less at the centre and paradoxically more at the centre(2004: 70).

b. Below the general social level, Yves Clot emphasises a second fascinating

aspect of the depersonalising aspect of work with important structuring dimensions.

This is the subjective aspect of work relating to the specificity of a profession: the

highly specialised ethicality of a professional milieu that fuses the intersubjective

and the technical. Clot (2004:34-38) argues that the best way to approach this reality

of the subject at work is by paralleling it with the importance of rhetorical genres in

language use as demonstrated by Bakhtine. Bakhtine, in his criticism of Saussure,

13


14/30

showed that language use was not well explained only through the classical

dichotomy of language and speech. The missing element in this dichotomy is the

social: the individual use of language is made possible by the recourse to socially

defined schemes, the genres of discourse. The genres are highly effective structures

that allow communication between individuals to occur by mobilising a complex

array of social and communicative assumptions that never have to become explicit,

unless communication breaks down and the rules and structures of the genres have to

be reflected upon. The genre pre-determines the choice of vocabulary, tone, style,

grammar, and so on. Because it is a complex, structured scheme that is shared by all

in the community of language, the genre of discourse allows for a highly efficient

performance of communicative action as it coordinates the different perspectives with

a minimum of actual, explicit exchange. The actual exchange of signs is minimal for a

maximum of communicative efficiency. Similarly, the ergonomic studies quoted and

the studies performed by Clot himself demonstrate the vital importance of genres of

activity in work places. The genre of activity is an informal mode of action

coordination that is essential for the actual, effective instrumental action to be

successful. The mechanical application of technical rules would lead to the

interruption or a dramatic slowing down of the production process. Only the implicit

rules, forms of behaviour, types of inter-individual coordinations, can fluidify the

rigid production processes imposed from outside. A whole universe of unwritten

professional rules makes the application of explicit rules work. The importance of this

type of intersubjective, largely embodied mode of cooperation is massively confirmed

by interactionist cognitive science (Hutchins, 2005).

The professional genres of activity are a fusion of technical constraint and social

interaction. They are determined by the material production process and the economic

14


15/30

aims, but they form a highly specific professional milieu. Such milieus are highly

hermetic, closed to the outside, because they are formed around highly specialised

skills that can only be acquired by the working subjects through apprenticeship and a

long intimate frequentation of the professional milieu. This is one sense of the

judgement of efficiency mentioned above. Only the individuals initiated to a trade can

truly understand what is meant in that context by efficiency, can truly fathom whether

or not something works properly. Of course, in the end, the judgement is objective,

instrumental, the ends are achieved or not, the instruments were properly used or not,

the clients are satisfied or dissatisfied, and so on. But because the objective ends can

be achieved only through the creation of such professional lifeworlds, retroactively,

these specialised social microcosms acquire a quasi-monopoly on the semantics of

efficiency. In particular, they have their own definition of what constitutes failure and

success (Hughes, 1951).

These genres have a depersonalising aspect, since they demand that the subject

integrate social rules, technical skills, forms of behaviour adapted to the task at hand

and unrelated to specific personalities. But it is clear again that the depersonalisation

that occurs in the acquisition of such a genre can again represent a form of positive

alienation. Here, the parallel with language is again highly suggestive. We use

language, a symbolic form shared by all, in genres of discourse, that is, in socially and

culturally defined schemes, but this is the only way for us to actually express

ourselves and express our individuality.

c. Finally, Yves Clots analyses point to an even more localised form of

depersonalisation with important structuring effects. This time, this is the essential

15


16/30

interaction of the subject with the world of tools, machines and technical procedures.

This material dimension is essential to the professional genres.

Clot (2004:136) notes in particular a very special kind of objects, he terms the

objectified memory of the inner environment, the traces of technical procedures

determined collectively that are objectified in objects, the material witnesses of the

unfathomable inner environmnent of work. The mastery of the genre is intimately

connected with the appropriate use of these objects, since they crystallise the secrets

of the trade. Again, the acquisition of such mastery involves a process of

depersonalisation that is at the same time the condition of greater autonomy and richer

subjectivity. Moreover, by learning to use these special objects, one in fact learns

much more than using an instrument properly. In fact, the skill puts one in touch with

the whole community of experts, the use of these special mnemotechnic object is a

mediation to enter the secret community of the trade.

Clot does not hesitate to generalise and interpret all object- and tool-related

activities as forms of social mediation. In the background lie the idea of the

anthropology of techniques that sees in techniques an externalisation and concretion

of the human mind in its historicality. If that is the case, then, at a very basic level, the

individual use of tools and techniques puts one directly in touch with the social power

and imaginary of a given historical time. More directly, though, the use of

instrumental objects and processes leads to a form of social integration because of the

anthropological origin and effect of the division of labour which determines the use of

instrumental entities. By confronting him- or herself to a tool or a machine, the

working subject indirectly yet irreducibly engages with many other social individuals:

the makers of the machine, the individuals who commanded the construction of the

machine, the engineers and maintenance workers understanding the inner workings of

16


17/30

the machine, the other users of the machine engaged in the same genre of activity, the

workers downstream relying on the finished product for their operations, etc. There

is no profession, even in those involving mainly emotional work, that does not

involve the use of material objects in which social relations are solidified.

However, as Clot says, despite its strong instrumental and social

overdetermination, no technical object carries its mode of functioning on its face. Its

proper use has to be learnt, just as much as the belonging to a professional group by

the mastery of a genre of activity involves a learning process. The question of

personal style reemerges here, the dialectic of impersonality and personal style. Every

worker engages with the objects, tools and machines of his or her work place

differently, despite the often highly constraining aspect of instrumental objects and

procedures. Indeed, this is one of the worst aspect of Taylorist work: to have made the

individual appropriation of objective work processes so difficult, indeed to have

wilfully intended to make them unattainable for working subjects.

3. The subject of work.

Dejourss methodological starting point is more directly phenomenological. It is this

focus on the phenomenological content of work that led Dejours to give such a central

place to the insight, gained from ergonomics, that real work is concerned with the gap

between the task to be done and the activity that is actually done to fulfil the task. In

Dejourss definition of work this is captured by the expressions: that which cannot

be obtained by the strict execution of the prescribed organisation of work and which

working subjects must face in order to truly work.

The prescribed organisation of work takes into account demands that stem

from a number of others: the external demands from the client and the hierarchy (and

17


18/30

indeed the shareholders), the specific social context constituted by the working peers

who impose specific constraints on the activity, and all the economic and technical

constraints imposed upon the activity of work and defining it as such. The real, on

the other hand, is simply made up of all the elements of the concrete reality of work

that could not be anticipated, regulated or coordinated in advance by and through the

organisation of work. The real element in work is the element that opposes the simple,

direct realisation of the prescriptions for the accomplishment of the task. Dejours

defines it as:

whatever, in the world, lets itself be known through its resistance to technical

mastery and scientific knowledge. In other words, the real is that element that makes

technique fail when all the resources of technique have been correctly used. The real

() is that which exists in the world and escapes us and becomes in turn an enigma

to be deciphered (2002:40-1).

The real is not necessarily the material in the sense of the Sartrian in-itself. It

is whatever resists the accomplishment of the task. It is the element that separates the

task to be done from the activity that actually does it. Often, the real is purely

social. Dejours for example highlights the fact that work organisations can regularly

be counter-productive, overly complex to the point of self-contradiction, that the

prescriptions, the rules and regulations, the technical procedures governing work

processes often contain contradictory or counter-productive elements that make the

activity of workers more rather than less difficult. In such cases, the real is of direct

social origin. But in all cases, something resists the efforts of working subjects when

they attempt to apply the rules that have been defined to achieve productive ends.

The discovery of the gap between the prescriptive and the real leads to the

redefinition of work as working, that is to say, as the activity demanded of the subject

18


19/30

in order for the prescribed task to be accomplished despite the prescribed rules being

obstructed by unforeseen events and disruptions. The redefinition of work as working

is based on the premisse that failure is an irreducible element of work: the

instrumental ends can be achieved only when all the social and material obstacles that

came in the way of the technical procedures have been circumvented. From the

psychological perspective, work consists in the personal investment demanded of the

subject to bridge the gap between the prescriptive and the real.

What emerges as the main feature of working () is that, even when the work is

well conceived, even when the organization of work is rigorous, even when the

instructions and procedures are clear, it is impossible to achieve quality if the orders

are scrupulously respected. Indeed, ordinary work situations are rife with unexpected

events, breakdowns, incidents, operational anomalies, organizational inconsistency

and things that are simply impossible to predict, arising from the materials, tools, and

machines as well as from other workers, colleagues, bosses, subordinates, the team,

the chain of authority, the clients, and so on. In short, there is no such thing as purely

mechanical work. (2007a:72).

This is a tremendously important dimension to highlight because of the

correction it brings to current definitions of work, in sociology and philosophy, and

more generally to common representations about the contemporary world of work. It

highlights the fact that science and technology, however efficient and masterful they

have become, still cannot control the contingency at the heart of reality, and

especially, at the heart of the reality of work. The reality of the world of work is today

ignored to such an extent that there is now a great discrepancy between the reality of

production, a world full of mishaps, accidents, failures, botched projects, and the

19


20/30

representations of it in the public imaginary, as a world totally ruled by scientific-

technological control.

The focus on the part that the subject must necessarily bring to work means

that there is no mechanical work. Even the most Taylorised form of work involves

some participation and adaptation on the part of the subject. This leads to a general

point: against the widespread diagnostic of the dematerialisation of social worlds, and

notably of the world of work, a diagnostic that gives the impression that contemporary

(working) subjects are now engaged only in pure cognitive, affective and

communicative exchanges, the psychology of work shows that subjects continue to be

engaged massively with the resistance of the material world. Furthermore, the

insistence on the active engagement of working subjects means that all work is to

some extent theoretical and practical at the same time. Theoretical because it involves,

to some degree, a reflexive adaptation to the contingent changes and challenges of the

performance of the task; and practical because the entire person is involved in the

performance of the task. The key word used by Dejours to encapsulate this aspect of

working is that of practical intelligence. All intelligence in a work situation is

practical, and all practice is forced to be intelligent, because of the adaptation

demanded by the real.

One obvious objection to this approach with its emphasis on the subjective

investment demanded of workers, is that it bears no significance for other disciplines

since it simply focuses on the subjective experience of an activity that can also be

objectively described, and especially one that can be quantified for the purpose of

calculation and prediction as in economic theory. However, the focus on work as a

subjective activity brings to light elements that are not just elements of work as a

mere subjective experience, but of work as such, of its very ontology, so to speak.

20


21/30

This is the deepest sense of the theory of the real and of the challenge to the subjects

efforts to realise the prescription. The key conclusion to be drawn from the gap

between the prescriptive and the real is that if the prescribed organisation of work is

followed to the letter, the end product, its desired quality or quantity, will not be

achieved. This in fact exactly what happens in forms of strike that make a point of

following every rule (a grve du zle in French). The subjective investment is an

irreducible and necessary moment in the work process. Without subjective

mobilisation, no production is possible.

Employers, managers, have known this since there has been a division

of labour. No work is possible without the active involvement of the workers, not for

the trivial reason that one needs workers to do the work, but because one needs

practically intelligent workers, even in seemingly unintelligent work, for the

production process to be efficient at all. This insight has tremendous critical

implications for theoretical and applied disciplines that use overly formal or abstract

definitions of work, as for example neoclassical economics. First, it implies that

without taking into account the necessary part played by subjective activity, one

cannot truly account for production itself and for productivity. In particular, it

becomes impossible to give a theoretical account of what matters most to economics:

namely the theory of the ways of raising productivity. Whilst neoclassical economics

operates with the thinnest definitions of work as disutility and opportunity cost,

purposefully abstracting from the content of work, it is forced to add to itself an ad

hoc complement in the form of management theory and personnel economics to

account for the motivation of workers. Despite its claim to avoid reference to any

psychological or anthropological element, neo-classical economics in fact

presupposes a crude psychology that it cannot fully suppress. It is the basic

21


22/30

assumption that given the opportunity, human beings would rather not work than

work, or that work is in essence irksome. Already in the founders of the neo-

classical tradition, the definition of work, and in particular the meaning of disutility,

were not as impoverished (Spencer, 2003). By contrast, a significant implication of

Dejours theory of subjective investment in work is that in normal conditions there is

no need to attempt to motivate workers, that it is impossible to prescribe the psychic

mobilisation, because fundamentally it is unnecessary. The problem is in fact the

exact opposite: how to make sure that the mobilisation of intelligence and personality

is not broken (2000:221). This is an insight that had already been articulated by

Adam Smith (1999:185):

If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they

have frequently occasion rather to moderate than to animate the application of many

of their workmen.

The shift to new techniques of production and management in the late 1970s

can be taken as a vindication of the new definition of work in the psychology of work:

the concrete practice of innovation in production techniques has proven the

psychology of work right since the shift to new techniques of production has

consisted to a large extent in the massive enrolment of workers subjectivities in the

production process.

Furthermore, as this last point also suggests, the realisation that the human

factor is an irreducible element in the production process opens onto a robust

normative and critical stance. In particular, those disciplines that operate with thin

definitions of work ignoring the subjective element end up doing great injustice to the

subjective demands of workers, notably by forcing reality to conform to their

abstraction, as in the case of policy work inspired by neoclassical economics. This

22


23/30

remark also targets all normative disciplines, like moral and political philosophy

political theories, including those who define themselves as critical.

2. Before Clot studied in detail the specific logic of professional milieus,

Dejours had already emphasised the importance of the specific type of sociality and

sociability involved in work: it is through coordinated activity that men and women

can face the challenge of applying rules and processes to attain the ends of the

utilitarian economic task. Next to subjective involvement, the coordination of activity,

first in the form of prescription imposed from above, but also in the form of horizontal

cooperation, are indispensable moments in the realisation of the utilitarian task.

Without coordination and cooperation, the productive ends cannot be met.

This new element arising from the definition of work at first seems to

contradict the previous point about the importance of subjective investment.

Prescribed rules and processes do not carry their application on their forehead. They

must be learnt, appropriated, mastered individually by each subject. This requires a

work of personal interpretation and adaptation. More importantly, the resistance of the

real means that the subject can perform the task only by stepping out of the tradition

and the norm. Because the prescriptive aspect of the labour process is not sufficient to

achieve the task, the subject is forced to trick the real:, he or she is forced to find the

resources in his or her practical intelligence to cheat the material and social resistance.

The subjective involvement in the task therefore leads at first to the radical solitude of

the producer. This irreducibly individual aspect of the application of rules and

processes carries with it the risk of being incompatible with other activities, when the

group is considered. An individual solution to a specific problem can become an

obstacle if it obstructs the strategies of the other workers or of the whole group. This

23


24/30

is why, Dejours argues, coordination from above can never be sufficient, and the real

performance of work always relies on horizontal cooperation.

Such cooperation, Dejours argues, is impossible without some minimal

normative requirements. The coordination of actions in the work situation is

dependent on the establishment of cooperation amongst workers. As with Clots

notion of a genre of activity, Dejourss key point is again that real work requires a

common framework of understanding that is simultaneously of technical-instrumental

and of normative-intersubjective nature, a frame that allows for a basic form of

understanding to take place and without which actions could not be coordinated.

What Dejours emphasises more than Clot is the communicative moment in

cooperation. The analogies with Habermas are fully appropriate: through the notion of

genre, Clot describes the professional world as a lifeworld, whilst Dejours insists on

the communicative practices that take place within such lifeworlds and make the work

cooperation possible. The irony of course is that the action in question is now an

instrumental one. As Dejours shows, (2002:62-69; 2007a:82) since the work process

requires cooperation between workers, it functions best if the individualised forms of

subjective investment that allow for the mastering of the task are recuperated,

confronted and discussed in a public forum, where a consensus can hopefully be

found on the best way to realise the production. The communication at play obeys

similar normative constraints as public discourse in general: via the justification of

claims through valid arguments acceptable to all; the publicising of effective

productive methods; which requires a basic trust amongst the agents involved in the

production project.

This is quite an ironic twist. Dejours uses Habermass theory of

communicative action to highlight dimensions of work that disappeared in Habermas

24


25/30

dualistic analysis of the forms of action. Dejours and Clot after him were thus able to

identify the essential normative moments that are required in instrumental action for

its success. The analytical distinction between instrumental and communicative action

is a dangerous simplification if it is interpreted in a reified way: for instrumental ends

to be coordinated, an essential normative component is required. A similar point

directed at other classical philosophical definitions of work, like that of Arendt, could

be made. Dejours manages to demonstrate that all work, including the most

mechanical one, is never reducible topoiesis ortechne, that is, to an action obeying

pure instrumental rules, but always constitutes also a form ofpraxis, insofar as it

involves the whole ethical character of the individual, relies on coordination and

cooperation, and necessitates fundamental ethical norms, like trust and the

symmetrical exchange of justifiable arguments (1998:180).

An important consequence of this definition of work from a psychological or

perspective is the role played by recognition in it. This is only a consequence of the

overall model, not in itself a part of the definition, but a significant consequence

nonetheless. Dejourss theory of the subject insists on the structuring dimension of

suffering at the core of subjectivity and especially of subjectivity at work (1998:181;

2003:149-151; 2007b). If working in its concrete sense means bringing about the

productive ends by circumventing the obstacles of the real to the application of

prescriptions, then work is essentially an experience that puts the subject in question:

work in the concrete sense is the experience of the failure of rules and regulations, it

is a challenge to the subjects capacity to innovate and trick the resistance of the

material and the social; it is often an affront to personal physical and psychological

abilities, in any case always a challenge to the identity of the subject. Since the

prescribed rules show their limitations, work is also always an experience on the

25


26/30

verge of the illegal, always a form of cheating with the rules. All of this makes work

an experience that is structurally inducing of suffering. But as we saw, it is in

cooperation that the task can actually be performed and the individual resources put to

the task acknowledged. It is therefore precisely through this recognition of the

subjects contribution that the suffering necessarily involved in work can be

sublimated into pleasure, ie in a subjectivity or identity enhancing experience.

the sense of suffering depends on recognition. When the quality of my work is

recognised, all my efforts, angst, doubts, disappointments, discouragements become

full of meaning. All that suffering had not been in vain; not only has it contributed to

the division of labour, but it has made me, in return, a different subject from the one I

was before recognition. The recognition of work, or indeed of the product of work,

can be repatriated by the subject in the construction of his or her identity. ()

Without the benefice of recognition of his or her work, and failing the power to

thereby access the meaning of his or her lived relation to work, the subject faces his

or her own suffering, and it alone (1998:37).

Recognition here is recognition of the individual workers contribution to the

production process. Dejours makes this a key element to differentiate between

pathological and identity enhancing work practices. Recognition in this model

combines two of the important possible meanings of the term: the agents active

contribution must be epistemically acknowledged; and a moral acknowledgement

must begrantedas acknowledgement of the agents contribution. If the judgement on

the agents practical contribution to the production process becomes central, then the

social component of the normative aspect of work will not limit itself to the general

question of the social status of a given activity defined as profession, in other words,

to the principle of performance. Two further social relations related to work become

26


27/30

normatively essential. First the relation internal to the production process, between the

agent and the hierarchy receives its distinct normative weight. It is no longer simply

reducible to the general social recognition, nor to a simple instrumental relation of

defining and applying means for productive ends. The lack of recognition of the

workers skills, in as much as they are practically and actively engaged, becomes a

major source of suffering. This is a denial of recognition not of the status, but of the

practical contribution to the production process. Here, the subjects inscription in the

division of labour finds a new, more concrete meaning, with the emphasis on the

actual place, in which the working subject is directly involved: the work place.

This leads to a second form of recognition: the recognition of the subjects

contribution to the production process can actually occur only in the actual workplace,

amongst the peers. This gives its proper name to the essential normative importance

of work collectives for working subjects. The participation in a genre and the

integration in a professional field are the pathway to recognition, which itself can be,

in good cases, an experience of sublimation of suffering. The point to stress here is

that recognition is a necessary consequence of the definition of work as coordinated

activity of subjects facing the opposition of the real. It means that recognition is a

necessary normative component of work, but in a more concrete and differentiated

sense than in social philosophy.

27


28/30

i See the exhaustive presentation of the psychodynamics of work by Molinier (2006), who insists in particular on the

strong interdisciplinarity characterising Dejourss project.ii See Daniellou (2004) for a presentation of Wisners important contributions to ergonomics.

Bibliography

Arendt, Hannah (1998) The Human Condition (2nd edition, original: 1958). Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Clot, Yves (1998)Le Travail sans lHomme. Pour une Psychologie des Milieux de Travail

et de Vie (2nd edition). Paris: La Dcouverte.

Clot, Yves (2004)La Fonction Psychologique du Travail(4th edition; first edition: 1999).

Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Curie, J. and Dupuy, R. (1994) Acteurs en Organisation, ou lInterconstruction des Milieux

de Vie, in C. Louche (ed)Individus et Organisations. Neuchatel: Delachaux et Niestle.

Daniellou, Franois (2004) Alain Wisner. Learning from the Workers Around the World

Ergonomia 26(3): 197-203.

Dejours, Christophe (1998) Souffrance en France. La Banalisation de lInjustice Sociale.

Paris: Seuil.

Dejours, Christophe (2000) Travail, Usure Mentale (3rd edition; first edition: 1980). Paris:

Bayard.

Dejours, Christophe (2002)Le Facteur Humain (3rd edition; first edition: 1995). Paris:

Presses Universitaires de France.

Dejours, Christophe (2003)Le Corps, dabord(2nd edition; first edition: 1986). Paris: Payot.

Dejours, Christophe (2007a) Subjectivity, Work and Action in Deranty, Jean-Philippe et al

(eds)Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory. Leiden: Brill.

Dejours, Christophe (ed) (2007b) Conjurer la Violence. Travail, Violence et Sant. Paris:

Payot.


29/30

Faure, Laurence (2001) French Anthropology and Material CultureJournal of Material

Culture 6:237-47.

Fraser, Nancy and Honneth, Axel (2003)Recognition or Redistribution? A Political-

Philosophical Debate. London: Verso.

Grint, Keith (1991) The Sociology of Work. London: Polity Press.

Habermas, Jrgen (1974) Labour and Interaction, in Theory and Practice. London:

Heinemann.

Haudricourt, Andr-Georges (1990)La Technologie, Science Humaine. Paris: Maison des

Sciences de lHomme.

Hugues, Everett (1951) Mistakes at Work Canadian Journal of Economics and Political

Science 17:320-27.

Latour, Bruno (2002) Morality and Technology. The Ends of the Means Theory, Culture

and Society 19:247-60.

Leroi-Gouhran, Henri (1993) Gesture and Speech. MIT Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1955) Eros and Civilisation, New York: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, Herbert (1988)Negations. Essays in Critical Theory. London: Free Association

Books.

Mauss, Marcel (1979) Body Techniques in Sociology and Psychology: Essays by Marcel

Mauss. London: Routledge and Kegan.

Meyerson, Ignace (1948)Les Fonctions Psychologiques et les Oeuvres. Paris: Vrin.

Meyerson, Ignace (1987)Ecrits. Pour une Psychologie Historique. Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France.

Molinier, Pascale (2006)Les Enjeux Psychiques du Travail. Paris: Payot.

Plato (1991) The Republic. New York: Basic Books

Smith, Adam (1999) The Wealth of Nations (first edition: 1776). London: Penguin.


30/30

Spencer, David (2003) Loves Labor lost? The Disutility of Work and Work Avoidance in

Economic Analysis of Labour SupplyReview of Social Economy 61(2):235-50.

Stiegler, Bernard (2006) Mcrance et Discrdit. 3. LEsprit Perdu du Capitalisme. Paris:

Galile.

Wallon, Henri (1930)Principes de Psychologie Applique. Paris: Armand Collin.

Wallon, Henri (1947) Taylorisme, Rationalisation, Slection, Orientation Technique, Art,

Science 1:5-11.

Wisner, Alain (1995) Understanding Problem-Building: Ergonomic Work Analysis,

Ergonomics 38(3):595-605.

Documents

Deranty_What is work. Key insights from the psychodynamics of work