Workplace stress is social in origin but individualized through diagnosis
Evidence
We must deal with it through self-medication, through antidepressants, which are increasingly widely prescribed, or, if we are lucky, through therapy. But these concerns — experienced now as individual psychic pathologies — do not really have their roots in brain chemistry: they reside in the wider social field. But, because there is no longer an agent, a mediator, for a class acting collectively, there is no way of tackling that wider social field. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1648
Categorization
- SEED: A strong essay/teaching angle on how depression became the psychic form of the absence of collective agency.
- XREF: connects to: Stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 42; Analyzing only subjective workplace reactions obscures the underlying management-labor conflict — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2094; Post-Fordist restructuring privatised individual workers’ experience of systemic economic stress — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1490 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Post-Fordist restructuring privatised individual workers’ experience of systemic economic stress
#corroborates(0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1490 - Post-Fordism internalized class antagonism into individual worker psychology
#corroborates(0.90) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1405 - Stress has been privatized, reframing systemic dysfunction as individual illness
#corroborates(0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 42 - Analyzing only subjective workplace reactions obscures the underlying management-labor conflict
#complicates(0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2094 - Resource inadequacy, overload, and role ambiguity correlate with poor worker mental health
#exemplifies(0.70) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 270