Description - Work and the Evolving Self by Steven D Axelrod
Despite the central role of the workplace in American social and economic life, psychoanalysis has had little to contribute to our national conversation about the nature and meaning of work. In "Work and the Evolving Self", Steven Axelrod begins to remedy this by setting forth a comprehensive psychoanalytic perspective on work life. Consonant with his analytic perspective, Axelrod sets out to illuminate the workplace by examining the psychodynamic meaning of work throughout the lifecycle. He begins by exploring the various dimensions of work satisfaction from a psychoanalytic perspective and then expands on the relationship between work life and the adult developmental process; he is especially concerned with the reciprocal way in which changing psychological needs and the demands and opportunities of work life influence one another throughout adulthood. This developmental perspective frames Axelrod's central task: an examination of the typical work-related problems encountered in clinical practice.
Beginning with a psychodynamic definitions of a "work disturbance", he goes on to delineate four specific categories of work-related dysfunction: work inhibition, workaholism, work diffusion and depression/disability. Case vignettes underscore the distinctiveness of each type of work disturbance. Moving on to treatment issues, Axelrod elaborates on the manner in which assessment, supportive and exploratory interventions all enter into the treatment of work disturbances. The status of work in the treatment process, including the therapist's own values about work and the ways in which therapy itself comprises both work and play, are perceptively addressed. Axelrod concludes by considering issues of career development that emerge in individual psychotherapy and exploring the psychological implications of dramatic changes now taking place in the workplace. "Work and the Evolving Self" is very much a psychoanalytic study of our time, since it demonstrates the adaptability of the psychoanalytic perspective to a range of treatments - from psychoanalysis to psychotherapy to vocational counselling - as they implicate the challenges and dilemmas of the workplace.
Axelrod is to be commended not only for using psychoanalysis to capture the psychological richness of work life, but for demonstrating how psychoanalytically informed treatments can move back and forth between directive interventions focusing on the external reality and exploratory interventions focusing on the individual's internal world. Axelrod's overview of the phenomenology, psychodynamics and treatment of problems of the workplace is a heartening example of the manner in which psychoanalytic principles can be applied to new populations and new therapeutic contingencies. As such, "Work and the Evolving Self" is an impressive contribution to the task with which psychoanalytic therapists are increasingly engaged: that of broadening their identities and treatment approaches in a world that increasingly demands flexibility and innovation.
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