Contrainte par corps : Le harcèlement moral

Abstract

The mediatic presence of mobbing questions its social and psychopathological legitimacy. To understand how toxic the experience of mobbing is, it is necessary to investigate how work situations impact identities. This new syndrom must be examined within the broader framework of positive and negative impact of work organization on physical and mental health. Individual defence mecanisms and collective strategies set up by subjects in order to hold on at work can either strengthen or dismantle a collective, thus resulting in the making of a scapegoat. Internalization of the firm's organizational values make tormenting individuals and systematizing it with corporal constraint techniques commonplace. The symbolic strength of job-related gestures is a particularly efficient tool to unsettle the psychosomatic economy. The methods used are comparable to torture or initiation techniques. The disaffiliation to a group emprisons the individual in an intense loneliness. Getting together with the company medical officer, the government medical inspector, the general practitioner, the work psychologist does not sum up to a medical and administrative strategy. This networking work symbolically highlights the isolation of the person harrassed and puts an end to the psychosomatic disinvolvement under way.