ABSTRACT
Human beings work with varying degrees of ease, comfort, and efficiency. Some people work quite well, some poorly, some cannot work at all. Freud's remarks on work are scattered very sparsely through his writings and are typically encountered as incidental observations. The concern of many neo-Freudians with ego development and the process of adaptation have turned attention to somewhat different problems from those that preoccupied the classical Freudians. Ives Hendrick has attempted to take account of human work in a manner that appears to stand midway between classical Freudian theory and modern ego theory. The principle of playing means that what is done is done for its own sake; gratification lies in the activity itself. The principle of working means that an action is not undertaken for its own sake, but for some other purpose, serving the ends of self-preservation: gratification lies not in the action as such, but in obtaining something by means of it.
