Souffrance au travail et violence relationnelle. Essai sur le mal institué

Among the factors of work suffering, we can recognise the structural role that plays the organisation of work; it has been pin pointed and underlined by Christophe Dejours and his colleagues in the last decades of the xxth century. However, it seems interesting to also interrogate the role of relational violence. To what extent does it take place in the genesis of this health problem and to the extent that it has become a preoccupation for clinicians? To answer this question, the author examines three processes regulating interpersonal links. He endeavours to determine if they can shed a light on the comprehension of mechanisms of violence within the specific work relationships framework. First will be addressed the group level phenomena of the “emissary victim”. According to René Girard, this process' function is to enable the group to bind through the common participation of eliminating one of its members. Hence the members create unanimity with a minus one. For Sigmund Freud, the concepts of “narcissism of small differences” help understand how you can be led to hate your immediate neighbour, or a peer that is not totally similar to you; if he is attacked on his little differences, it is because they are perceived as a menace to the aggressor's narcissisms. Lastly, according to Emmanuel Diet, it is a situation of crisis in an institution or company that will induce a subject in crisis; this person, because of certain traits of his personality's pathological predispositions, will find himself in a position of “thanatophore”, as a beholder of death, embodying destructivity. A clinical illustration based on a psychotherapist/psychologist's private practice will punctuate the conceptual path accompanied by the three authors previously mentioned. We shall demonstrate that their propositions help shed light on the comprehension of situations brought by patients consulting due to sufferings experienced at work.