Treating social suffering? Work-related suffering and its psychotherapeutic re/interpretation. Issue 2 (3rd May 2016) - Flick, Sabine
ABSTRACT: This paper examines how psychotherapists deal with social suffering in its work-related forms. Based on the results of a qualitative empirical study in psychosomatic hospitals in Germany, I show how psychotherapy can lead to a normalization of overburdening demands at work, and ultimately a de-thematization of social factors. I argue that psychotherapists transform social suffering into suffering related to the self by re/interpreting the links to society that figure in the patients' subjective theories of illness. The reason for this transformation lies in the logic of the profession necessary to legitimate the claim that the patients' suffering falls within the purview of psychotherapy. Therapists have to disregard 'the social' in this manner since there are no medical diagnostic tools that would explicitly refer to work. The result of this professional re/interpretation is a form of therapy that medicalizes and personalizes social suffering, thereby intensifying, rather than tempering, a self-referentiality on the side of patients that is forgetful of society and already weighs on the individuals seeking treatment. To develop this argument, the dimension of work and its significance for psychotherapeutic etiology and diagnosis is considered. The study used and its results are explicated then in terms of three strategies of re/interpretation. Finally, the social-theoretical implications of this re/interpretation are discussed.