During a recent seminar, an industrial executive learning about my profession as a psychoanalyst discreetly approached me and shared his story through the “complex story of a very close friend.” A few minutes of conversation over coffee were enough for him to explain that “many” in his company would “need my services.” He mentioned the “loss of meaning in his work,” the “lack of recognition” from leaders… and the “effects of the crisis.”
An unexpected and indirect consequence of the global economic crisis: employees and corporate executives are starting to question… themselves! Gone are the daily grind and the prospects for career advancement. Apparently finished are the mad rushes for social promotion and the exceptional efforts to meet targets set by management. The culprit, according to several surveys including one by the newspaper “Le Monde,” is what is called corporate culture. Supposed to suggest a general feeling of belonging, a “lineage” always reassuring in its presentation and in its unconscious repercussions, this distinctive spirit of the company aims to offer a “collective identification” to fill personal voids. It also claims to disseminate among the staff a “raison d’être” for their commitment. This specific brand, built around an “image” of the “company,” now suffers the torments of economic modernity: “mergers, acquisitions, and changes in shareholders no longer allow for identifying the true decision-makers,” one hears here and there. The hierarchical link, the one that makes “sense” in the psyche of the employee, seems broken. The employee feels “abandoned,” the executive “devalued.”
The Crisis: New Opportunities?
The sharpness of the crisis reveals the idealized artifices of hyper-consumption and the hazards of the economic world. People “recenter on themselves.” Largely started before the bank failures, stimulus packages, and the spectacular rise in unemployment, this “rediscovery of oneself” is based on the need to bring out the essential over the trivial: the moment is deemed “opportune” to know “who one is and where one is going,” in order to better start anew when the time comes. It is not uncommon to hear these same people explain, moreover, that the crisis will “reshuffle the cards,” “offer new opportunities.” In short, the “optimal moment” to change jobs, a moment, however, that should be accompanied by a “personal search.” Sign of the times, the question arises of installing “psychologists” in companies. Will it simply be a matter of listening, identifying, intervening, or even “repairing”? The symptoms of patients very often reflect the ills of society: the “psychologist” who would work in this way on the “real” might risk endorsing, even reinforcing, the suffering that originates there while exonerating the company from its possible responsibilities. For different reasons, both employees and executives generally struggle to discuss their psychological problems: either to avoid being “singled out” or even because they do not grasp their nature. Even when they suffer from them. In this regard, the crisis could help speech find the paths of its expression.
Reading Recommendations:
*La vie idéalisée par la culture d’entreprise et les nouvelles méthodes managériales ne serait qu’un leurre. Worse, a source of human annihilation. A stimulating book founded on testimonies, and deliberately written in a style that parodies the vocabulary of “dynamic executives.”* Alexandre des Isnards, Thomas Zuber, “L’open space m’a tuer,” Hachette Littératures, 2008, 213 pages, €16.50.
*All is not lost! A psychiatrist father and his son, a former prep school student now leading a major international group, offer savvy advice to young people wanting to embark on the journey of preparing for top schools.* Patrice Huerre, Thomas Huerre, “La prépa…without stress!” Hachette Littératures, 2009, 162 pages, €14.
