ABSTRACT
This chapter explores who have an intuition of the “centrality of work” and who would like to have an idea of what clinical data on the subjective relation to work may reveal to us. The subjective relation to work plays a key role in the processes involved both in the construction of health as well as in psychiatric and psychosomatic decompensation. Work cannot be held solely to account for a socially generated discontent, one that lies at the root of all somatic afflictions and the most vicious mental afflictions. Work is nowhere near to being replaced by substitute investments. The psychodynamics of work possesses the particular characteristic of providing access to the apprehension of certain processes involved in health and in normality. Many psychiatrists, certainly, consider themselves to know what normality is once they have gained some clinical experience and a theoretical understanding of madness.
