The psychodynamics of work is defined as the analysis of psychic processes mobilized by the gathering of a subject and the work organization constraints. In the 80s, the researches conducted in male workplace environments allowed to uncover the existence of collective defense strategies against suffering at the work. As from 1988, an important interdisciplinary work with work sociologies was launched. It is concerned with knowing whether the psychodynamics work was heuristic to equally analyze the situations of women at work and to reexamine the preexisting knowledge on men suffering in a sexualized problematic framework. The paper reports the main determinants which led to the establishment of sex social relationships and its challenge, the sexual division of work, a central dimension of the clinic research, the theory and methodology in workplace psychodynamics. An important issue in the paper is the situation of nurses, from which is constituted the main knowledge on the relations between health and work on the women's side.
Work psychodynamics; sex social relationships; suffering at work; collective defense strategies