ABSTRACT
Chapter Twelve considers the new directions that reflections on the opératoire have taken in the work of Christophe Dejours. Straddling the fields of psychosomatics and the psychodynamics at the work place, this author has studied and documented cases in which self-deafening becomes a mandatory procedure to fit in at the job. If desire is not initiated by sufficiently tantalising enigma encountered in the parents' world, the dead weight of things will increasingly assert itself. Even those who had a good enough childhood can be worn down by incessant, daily usure. Dejours has also given thought to the central role of work in the life of the subject and has shown sensitivity to the inter-generational effects of self-numbing and the longterm effects of socially accepted gender roles on the balances established in relationships. Apart from taking into account the trajectories of desire, he has also studied the vicissitudes of aggression if interdicted from pathways of expression and the storage of split-off zones of personality in an amental sector, an arrangement which permits the individual to stay normal, most of the time, if surrounding reality does not put too much pressure on his/her self-composure.
