ABSTRACT
The formidable effectiveness of psychological harassment becomes clear after this long detour via the mental challenges of the work situation. In the process of harassment, the repetition—conscious or unconscious of criticisms, goading, being placed in positions of blame or paradoxical prescriptive rules, quickly leads to impasse in the work of mental elaboration and takes on a certain power of effraction of the psychism. Body and psychism work in unison towards mutually-rewarding production. The body is only accepted as a reservoir of strength, of power. The body in the organisation of work is a vehicle, not a starting point. The gestures of the work practice or trade cannot thus be reduced to efficient and operational biomechanical patterns. In parallel to the clinical wealth of research into mental health at work, the notion of harassment threatens to occupy the entire conceptual horizon such that the complaints of employees tend to be expressed almost uniquely by this formulation.
