ABSTRACT
For the bulk of the adult population, work provides a major frame of reference. As Freud (1930) remarked, work is a person’s strongest tie with reality. The impact of employment on the use of our time, for example, is profound: ‘Working defines the time structure for days, weeks and years. It marks the division between the productive and reproductive, and often between auto- and hetero-determined activities. It lends itself to legitimize socially biographic phases: training, work life, retirement’ (Ruiz-Quintanilla and Wilpert 1988: 9).
