How to deal with suffering at work? When work hurts, a book published in February 2017 by InterEditions, written by Claude de SCORRAILLE, Olivier BROSSEAU and Grégoire VITRY, founders of Cabinet LACT in Paris, answers this crucial and still current question by proposing an innovative therapeutic method, capable of deliver results quickly. Here is an excerpt from the book.
The clinic of the relationship sheds a different light on the nature and treatment of psychological disorders that are encountered in work contexts by addressing them in their relational dynamics as they take place in the present. The clinic of the relationship is based on a systemic and interactional conception of well-being, considered as emerging from the interactions that the individual weaves with himself, others and his context. From this perspective, the individual and his work environment are therefore intimately linked, without it being possible to disentangle them. Focusing on the causes of suffering at work to discover possible treatments is very disappointing, even aggravating in some cases. Because in the complex world of organizations, where there are many interactions, the principle that links the elements together is governed by a circular and non-linear causality of cause and effect. Cause and effect constitute a circular system of reciprocity and interdependence. By taking this into account, it becomes possible, for example, to give a new perspective to a harassment situation by emphasizing that it is just as fair to say that it is the victim who creates the executioner when it is usual to consider the reverse. Therefore, interventions on such disorders can take a completely different direction that will leave aside the medical route or the legal route. The approach that we deploy is based on a solid theoretical corpus which gives its intervention methodology the rigor and flexibility necessary for its clinicians to adapt to situations of suffering at work and guide those who experience it towards of appeasement.
The clinic of the relationship is something other than a clinic of the psychopathology of work; she can treat it, but the suffering can also be something other than psychopathology. It may just be relationship pathology. In our approach, pathology is "an emergent quality" of the relationship. In this sense, the clinic of the relationship does not aim to psychologize the evils of work but to take them into consideration in order to overcome them, dissolve them, circumvent them... and more broadly to ensure that work contexts can update their own rules. functioning when these have become either too rigid or obsolete. The clinic of the relationship makes it possible to highlight the construction of reality in which the "patient" participates and which makes him suffer. His attempts to propose dysfunctional solutions then become clear to him. This discovery, conscious or purely emotional, makes it possible to stop them or at least curb them, which then promotes the emergence of a feeling of better being.
Our approach has a specific goal: to put an end to suffering. For this, the worker listens to the complaint of his interlocutor, helps him to read the situation from an interactional angle, and agrees with him to make experiments allowing him to access new resources in stopping dysfunctional solutions.
