The author takes a historical approach to the concept of work in an effort to clarify the place and function that, in contemporaneity, capitalism delegates to the worker. She takes into account the fact that the use of the word in question is restricted to the category of wage-earners and/or the unemployed. As a reference, she adopts Freud's structural theory which, from the beginning, has supported the civilizing and acculturation processes. Starting from that point – the structure, which necessarily implies the use of identifications as the foundation of the subject – this leads to a review of the difference between the worker's health and illness.