El análisis del trabajo en Psicología.

This paper holds that Work Psychology can improve the understanding of the problems in its field if it brings to the foreground the work itself. Developments in such direction are discussed, mainly those from Christophe Dejours, Yves Clot, and Elliott Jaques. Since its inception Work Psychology has been understood as the application of psychological concepts to the study of people's performance in the context of their employment work. The work itself was seen as something given and objectifiable. The tradition of the School of Human Relations puts the social interaction as the main content and leaves the work itself as context. For Zaleznik this approach led managers to concentrate on what he called "psychopolitics", neglecting the actual work, the role of aggression in it, and the conflict between the individual and the organization. Dejours called his approach "Psychodynamics of Work", and focused on the subjective and intersubjective processes aroused by work, whose dynamics are activated by conflicts. He underlined the difference between work as prescribed and actual work. Trying to achieve the prescribed goal, the person collides with everything that resists his efforts in reality, both physical and social, and even unconscious. The first experience of work is that of suffering. Dejours highlights the centrality of the body in this suffering and in the whole work process. Suffering is also the starting point for the deployment of subjectivity in the construction of the task in order to overcome obstacles by going beyond the prescriptions. If a person finds space in the organization for this deployment, "living work" occurs, which benefits both the organization and the person. This space is one where communication circulates in both directions, which makes it possible for work to become visible and achieve recognition. If, on the other hand, the organization thwarts the subjective deployment, the situation becomes pathogenic. Yves Clot interpolates between the prescribed and the real work, the unrealized possibilities, which provide energy that contributes to the dynamics of the work process, either as available resources or as restrictions. This idea qualifies the conception of the encounter with the task prescribed as suffering. For Clot, the psychological function of work is to enable people to separate their subjective concerns from the social occupations they must fulfill, which accords them a place in the society via division of labor. Clot designates "professional genre" to the specifics of the occupation assumed, a flexible set of orientations that is reworked by each one as a personal style. Jaques studied the work process from Kleinian psychoanalytic perspective and his experience in industry. In his analysis of salaried work he distinguishes two elements: the prescribed content, goals and means that leave no choice to the employee, and the discretionary content, the elements upon which the employee is expected to decide. Jaques describe several stages in the process of work and highlights the continuous interaction of conscious and unconscious areas of mind in it, and the importance of anxiety. Although both Dejours and Clot highlight the importance of recognition in work experience, Jaques proposes that recognition is manifested concretely in the breadth of responsibility and remuneration associated with the position. It is argued that putting into dialogue the developments of the cited authors, despite their differences, would fertilize the theory, and make new interventions possible. It is suggested to focus the teaching of Work Psychology on the analysis of the experience of working itself. Other suggestions are avoid the "rhetoric of suffering" in the dissemination of topics of the specialty; to ground applications on concrete analysis of the organization, and to pay attention to the uniqueness of the case rather than to the application of a given scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]