By the mid-1990s, practicing in the city of San Francisco amidst the amazing economic explosion of success in the neighboring Silicon Valley, I had become accustomed to, even if not totally at ease with, the experience of a 20-something-year-old walking into my office for emotional help only to have it mentioned in passing that he/she had become a millionaire the day before. Countless others had recently arrived to join enterprises that had mushroomed into billion-dollar businesses in some cases, seemingly overnight, in others, after a long and labored birth. Still other individuals made huge sums of money by providing huge sums of money to the brash start-ups they thought would be winners. There were not enough computer-savvy teenagers to fill all the programming positions that blossomed at every turn. There was work for everyone at all levels.
No one, not even we wizened psychological professionals, expected that these warm winds of fortune would turn so suddenly and violently southward. The scene changed dramatically. The commonplace became the many start-ups that failed, major companies that downsized, formerly proud corporate giants that merged with others to survive. Young people who had risen quickly straight out of business schools were suddenly searching for jobs, anything to pay the inflated mortgages they had unwittingly helped to produce on houses that were in fact nowhere close to the value placed on them.
Corporate managers and leaders, consultants and professionals in their thirties and for ties were suddenly having to start over, even accepting positions that reversed the direction of their career trajectories. Many who had committed everything or had become attached to the promise of the comfortable life for which the Bay Area is known cried bitter tears about having no choice but to give it up to relocate to more practical locations. Even major law firms and one venerable investment finance firm, dependent on the cash that had flowed so easily from these sources, closed their doors forever. Within a matter of months one-third of my practice was unemployed.
But, the psychology of work, what one does by oneself, with oneself, and for oneself to earn an income or one's keep in some form is less well articulated, but no less important in our therapeutic goals and in our patients' functioning, not to mention survival.
Downsized. Laid-off. Let go. Unemployed. Out of work. Euphemisms for various moments, states of being, conditions or actions one has had to submit to. It is a painful and awkward reminder that fast upon the initial introduction to someone new, the almost inevitable, automatic inquiry that follows is: “So what do you do?” What is your occupation? How do you occupy yourself? In what manner is your self employed, your talents or capacities deployed?”
Hello, my name is Erik. I am a psychoanalyst.
We are speaking here of a central feature of identity, that elusive concept that Erikson, more than anyone, put on our theoretical and clinical maps and that we have never fully come to terms with ever since. But, long before that, even when Freud declared that the territory of our therapeutics was to restore individuals to their potential of achieving love and work, we have assumed the importance of this dimension of everyday adult life to be central to each person's well-being. Love and work. We psychoanalysts have an abundance of theories concerning the former—libidinal, relational, and attachment-based. Loving and hating (or some variation of those ideas) comprise the basis in one way or another of all our theories about the psychological development and functioning of the human animal. But, the psychology of work, what one does by oneself, with oneself, and for oneself to earn an income or one's keep in some form is less well articulated, but no less important in our therapeutic goals and in our patients' functioning, not to mention survival.
If it seems at first too dramatic to put it in these terms—identity and survival—it will not require much reflection to see why it is nothing less. We spend a majority of our childhood and growing-up time being educated eventually to apply our learning and capacities to performing tasks for which we can be remunerated to provide ourselves and dependents with at least the basic requirements for survival and comfort. This is, of course, the simplest, if not simplistic, way of putting it all. But, invite someone who has lost his/her job into your consulting room and you will soon be carried into a realm where one experiences a
Erik Gann, M.D., is Past-president and training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. He is also a principal in the Boswell Group, a psychoanalytic consulting group to organizational and corporate boards and leadership.
basic threat to one's sense of stability and well-being and a constant challenge to one's identity. Most of an individual's waking life will be spent working.
The therapist will not be surprised by the kinds of clinical problems encountered in the office that develop in the wake of an individual's loss of work. Almost always, some degree of narcissistic injury is present, often mixed with depression about the losses incurred and anxiety about one's present and future states and plans. The psychological symptoms are often compounded by practical issues—financial complications, possible geographic relocation, loss of familiar life structures, resultant familial pressures, social stigma, and so on. The clinician may be challenged to offer a kind of flexibility in treatment arrangements—such as fee, frequency, length of treatment—that do not always figure into the picture otherwise.
Beyond the traditional consulting room, the psychoanalyst has a larger role to play in this domain. The laid-off individual is part of a system, several systems, in fact. There are needs for a consultant on many levels. Recently, a major retail electronics chain laid off hundreds of workers, notifying them by e-mail! This was not the first or only such instance of a thoughtless, leave aside inhumane, method of communication, utilized to avoid the discomfort of delivering bad news. It cannot be overlooked, however, that someone else's job is to deliver this blow, and this is not pleasant or easy work.
Psychoanalysts could offer valuable help to organizations and businesses on a number of levels in this regard. The managers who have to do the firing need to be educated about the kinds of trauma that this can precipitate. Businesses and corporations need help in dealing with the kinds of regressive transferences and countertransferences that arise and in developing better systems to provide support and transition for those who have to leave. The business or organization as a group may well be enmeshed in a regression and become symptomatic on a larger scale. An on-going consultative relationship may provide additional resources to a business undergoing restructuring of the sort that requires laying-off workers. In the end, economic cycles will ensure recurrent epidemics of unemployment. Psychoanalysts may be able to play a crucial role at many levels to help promote a more salutary outcome for the individual, the business, and society. There is much work yet to be done in this area.