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<blockquote>The great majority work only when [[forced ]] by [[necessity]], and this [[natural ]] [[human ]] aversion to work gives rise to the most difficult [[social ]] problems.<ref>{{C&D}} Ch. 2</ref></blockquote>

In its general [[sense]], the [[word ]] work denotes an expenditure of [[energy ]] by a [[system ]] or organism that produces an effect or transformation. In [[psychoanalysis]], [[mental ]] work is taken to mean any [[activity ]] of the [[psychical ]] [[apparatus ]] that is designed to deal with [[instinctual ]] excitations.

As early as "Some Points for a Comparative Study of [[Organic ]] and [[Hysterical ]] Motor Paralyses" (1893c), a paper originally published in [[French]], [[Freud ]] introduced a [[notion ]] cardinal to his entire work: "Every [[event]], every psychical impression is provided with a certain quota of [[affect ]] (Affektbetrag) of which the ego divests itself either by means of a motor reaction or by associative psychical activity.... [T]his conception (Vorstellung) does not become liberated and accessible so long as the quota of affect of the psychical [[trauma ]] has not been eliminated by an adequate motor reaction or by [[conscious ]] psychical activity" (pp. 171-172). It was therefore on the basis of [[clinical ]] [[experience ]] that the [[idea ]] of mental work imposed itself on Freud the therapist as a necessary activity for the patient—as distinct, in [[particular]], from the [[patient]]'s more [[passive ]] [[role ]] in [[treatment ]] using [[hypnosis]]. In his earliest [[psychoanalytical ]] writings, it was a cognitive kind of work that was seen as making it possible to resolve the [[contradiction ]] between an unacceptable idea that had aroused a painful affect and the ego. The aim of such "associative [[working ]] over (assoziative Verarbeitung)" (1894a, p. 50) was to integrate forgotten ideas—which Freud would later call [[repressed ]] ideas—into the realm of [[consciousness]].

By drawing this [[distinction ]] between associative mental work and a motor [[discharge ]] comparable to the reflex arc, Freud not only described the aim of such work, namely to deal with the quota of affect, but also offered a first glimpse of what was to become psychoanalysis: the study of the functioning of the [[psychical apparatus]], and at the same [[time ]] a therapeutic method designed to bring back into consciousness, by means, precisely, of [[psychic ]] work, [[ideas ]] that had been repressed. The term work appears frequently in Freud's writings, and very often it refers to one or [[other ]] of these two aspects of psychoanalysis.

It is significant that Freud [[chose ]] a term belonging at once to ordinary and to [[scientific ]] [[language ]] in [[order ]] to describe his view of the psychical apparatus: by analogy with the natural [[sciences]], which he so often invoked, he took work to mean a [[physical ]] measure implying a certain expenditure of energy. Throughout Freud's writings, in fact, the idea of work supplied him with the yardstick with which to gauge every manifestation of mental activity, not only within the treatment (the work performed respectively by [[analyst ]] and [[analysand]], as discussed for example in the Studies on [[Hysteria ]] [1995d]), but also in respect of the operation of various mental [[processes ]] (as for [[instance ]] the [[dream]]-work, [[joke]]-work, the work of [[mourning]], or the psychic work of [[repression ]] in the [[child ]] during the [[oedipal ]] period).

Beginning with The [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams ]] (1900a), Freud considered—"since [[nothing ]] but a [[wish ]] can set our mental apparatus at work" (p. 567)—that the dream was a wish-fulfillment, and that it was governed by the [[pleasure ]] [[principle]]. The task of the [[dream-work]], whose chief mechanisms Freud described as [[condensation]], [[displacement]], considerations of representability, [[symbolization]], and secondary revision, was to transform the formative components of dreams—daily residues, [[bodily ]] stimuli, dream-thoughts—into a [[manifest ]] [[content ]] acceptable to the otherwise vigilant consciousness of the dreamer. In [[Jokes ]] and Their Relation to the [[Unconscious ]] (1905c), Freud discussed the work involved in the [[construction ]] of jokes, an activity designed to produce pleasure, and demonstrated its kinship with the mechanisms of the dream. The [[Three ]] Essays on the [[Theory ]] of [[Sexuality ]] (1905d) introduced the [[sexual ]] [[instinct ]] as a way of conceptualizing the pressure for work mobilized by [[desire]]; the work of the [[psychic apparatus ]] was thus deemed to be the management of excitations emanating from the [[sexual instinct]].

In "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning," (1911b), Freud reasserted that the activity of the psychical apparatus was governed by the [[pleasure principle]], but he added that in the course of [[development ]] the [[reality ]] principle could establish itself and modify things: "Just as the pleasure-ego can do nothing but wish, work for a yield of pleasure, and avoid [[unpleasure]], so the reality-ego [[need ]] do nothing but strive for what is useful and guard itself against damage" (p. 223). Later, in "Mourning and [[Melancholia]]" (1916-17g [1915]), Freud showed that mourning was [[responsible ]] for the work of withdrawing [[libido ]] from the [[object ]] in situations where the object was highly cathected.

The word work was used throughout Freud's writings, too, to denote effort expended during [[analytic ]] treatment, whether by the analyst or by the patient. In his paper on "Constructions in [[Analysis]]," for example, he reminded his readers "that the work of analysis consists of two quite different portions, that it is carried on in two [[separate ]] localities [and] involves two [[people]], to each of which a distinct task is assigned." Moreover, the "person who is [[being ]] analysed has to be induced to [[remember ]] something that has been experienced by him and repressed; and the [[dynamic ]] determinants of this [[process ]] are so interesting that the other portion of the work, the task performed by the analyst, [may be] pushed into the background" (1937d, p. 258). The analyst's said task Freud nevertheless compared first of all to that of the archaeologist; he then distinguished between two kinds of work on the analyst's part that were undertaken in parallel: construction (or reconstruction) and [[working-through ]] (durcharbeiten), the second being needed in order to overcome the [[resistances ]] that the analyst's constructions were liable to provoke in the patient.

Finally, Freud did not overlook the everyday [[meaning ]] of work as professional activity. Like Voltaire, whom he cited, he underscored the great [[value ]] of work in this sense, but for his part he viewed it from the standpoint of the [[economics ]] of the libido, and described it as a [[form ]] of [[sublimation ]] offering the possibility "of displacing a large amount of [[libidinal ]] components, whether [[narcissistic]], [[aggressive ]] or even [[erotic]]"; to the extent that it made possible "the use of existing inclinations . . . or . . . instinctual impulses," any [[profession ]] could be "a source of special [[satisfaction]]" (1930a [1929], p. 80n).

Many [[recent ]] approaches to psychoanalysis have given a significant [[place ]] to the notion of work. A notable example is André Green's "work of the [[negative]]," which, though it is a product of the [[death ]] instinct, functions in a sense by making the negative positive: a [[void]], a [[lack]], or a [[state ]] of mourning itself becomes an object of [[identification ]] or an object susceptible of [[cathexis]], to the detriment of the [[absent ]] object itself. Negative [[hallucination]], the function of disobjectalization, negative [[narcissism]], or the [[complex ]] of the [[dead ]] [[mother ]] are so many paradigms of the work of the negative in operation.

René Angelergues (1993) has distinguished between two qualitative orientations of mental work, the one toward sublimation, the other toward erotization. It is also worth mentioning the "work of [[thought]]" (Anzieu, 1996; Mijolla-Mellor, 1992). And, lastly, the phenomenon of mentalization, which, according to theÉcole de Psychosomatique de [[Paris]], deals with the quantity and quality of an [[individual]]'s ideas—and is thus closely akin to that mental work which has the capacity to cope with and manage [[anxiety ]] and intraspsychic conflicts.

See also: Adolescent crisis; Autohistorization; Construction/reconstruction; [[Dream work]]; [[Interpretation of Dreams]], The; Mourning; Negative, work of; "[[Outline ]] of [[Psycho]]-Analysis, An"; [[Preconscious]], the; Secondary revision; Therapeutic alliance; Working-through.[[Bibliography]]