Description
Book SynopsisThis provocative collection of essays presents a powerful critique of contemporary discourse that portrays work - paid employment - as a moral imperative, essential for our health and well-being. The contributors describe the mental health impact of modern-day workplaces, with their precarity and constant managerial scrutiny. They throw light on the emerging role of the psychologist and psychotherapist as agents of the state within the welfare system. And they question the deployment of mindfulness and other workplace `wellness' initiatives in the place of more genuine and collective attempts to transform work. The Work Cure is an invitation to imagine a different kind of future, where employment no longer represents the chief source of security and meaning, so integral to our well-being. It is also essential reading for anyone who has doubted whether positivity, self-improvement and `resilience' can really be the answer to work's problems.
Trade Review'The idea that work, including the enthusiastic search for work, is integral to mental health has become a key ideological tenet of post-industrial capitalism. By re-introducing critical and political perspectives to this agenda, The Work Cure demonstrates that resistance is possible, and in doing so offers hope of a more emancipatory psychology.'; William Davies, author of The Happiness Industry.
Table of ContentsIntroduction - Putting therapy to work, David Frayne; Part 1: Mental management. 1 The black dog - Ivor Southwood; 2 No crying in the breakroom - Nic Murray; 3 Understanding affective labour - Jamie Woodcock; 4 Reproducing anxiety - Dave Berrie and Emily McDonagh; 5 Challenging McMindfulness in the corporate university - Steven Stanley. Part 2: The work cure. 6 The employment dogma - David Frayne; 7 Not in my name, not in my profession's name - Jay Watts; 8 The IAPT assembly line - Paul Atkinson; 9 The social and political origins of wellbeing - Psychologists for Social Change; 10 `We rebel because We misfit' - Arianna Introna and Mirella Casagrande; 11 Unrecovery - Recovery in the Bin.
