You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is the purpose of this paper to investigate the concept of work and the role it plays in personality development. Specifically, an attempt is made to demonstrate how, as a function of early social experience, an individual will tend to invest work with varying amounts of drive energy or neutralized energy. Corroboratory evidence is drawn from both clinical experience and the findings of experiments in social psychology. Suggestions are made for a research strategy with which to evaluate the theoretical position taken.
One of the few theories of work, and certainly the most inclusive one, was suggested by Freud (1930):
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensable to the preservation and justification of existence in society [p. 80].
It is necessary to note in this passage that Freud differentiates between two psychic functions of work. The first provides for a discharge of libidinal and aggressive impulses; the second provides a means for "binding the individual more closely to reality." Both may or may not be a result of conflict. With regard to the latter function, Freud would appear to have allowed for the existence of a mechanism neither directly caused by nor dependent upon drive, a position agreeing with that of ego psychology. As Hartmann (1939) noted: