Work–family interpersonal capitalization: Sharing positive work events at home

In a 3-week experience-sampling study of 52 full-time employees, the authors investigated the within-individual relationships among positive work events, affective states, and job satisfaction. They also examined the influence of work–family interpersonal capitalization (sharing work events with one’s spouse or partner at home) on employees’ job and relationship satisfaction. Results revealed that positive events influenced job satisfaction through positive affect, and work–family interpersonal capitalization on the most positive work event of the day positively impacted job satisfaction over and above the effects of the event’s pleasantness and of the number of other positive work events experienced that day.     

Influences on employee perceptions of organizational work–life support: Signals and resources

This study examined predictors of employee perceptions of organizational work–life support. Using organizational support theory and conservation of resources theory, we reasoned that workplace demands and resources shape employees' perceptions of work–life support through two mechanisms: signaling that the organization cares about their work–life balance and helping them develop and conserve resources needed to meet work and nonwork responsibilities. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that higher demands (work hours and work overload) were associated with reduced perceptions that the organization was supportive of work–life integration. Resources (job security, fit between employees' needs and the flexible work options available to them, supervisor support and work group support) were positively associated with perceptions of organizational work–life support. The results of this study urge further scholarly attention to work-based demands and resources as predictors of perceived organizational work–life support and yield implications for managerial practice.     

A Work-Life Identity Model of Well-Being: Towards a Research Agenda Linking Quality-of-Work-Life (QWL) Programs with Quality of Life (QOL)

QWL is conceptualized in terms of the interface between employee role identities and work resources. QWL programs serve to enhance QOL by (1) providing appropriate work resources to meet the expectations of employee role identities, (2) reducing role conflict in work and non-work life, (3) enhancing multiple role identities, (4) reducing role demands, (5) reducing stress related to work and non-work role identities, and (6) increasing the value of the role identity. We describe a variety of QWL programs related to work life (decentralized organization structures, teamwork, parallel structures, ethical corporate mission and culture, the organization work schedule, etc.) and non-work life (work at home, flextime, compressed work week, part-time work arrangements, job sharing, etc.) and show how they serve to enhance QOL using the language of work-life identity. Doing so helps develop a research agenda based on the work-life identify model.     

'Go! Sterilise the fertile with thy rage' envy as embittered desire

This paper is concerned with the operation of envy: it considers its origins and their repercussions, in particular its compulsion to sterilize the evidence of fertility, exemplified by Roger Money-Kyrle's evocation of 'the parental intercourse as the supremely creative act'. The inevitable impact on the analytic relationship is considered in the context of two clinical examples of impasse. It is argued that such fundamentally negative transferences, one full of overt aggression and enactment, the other more covertly sabotaging, derive from envious retaliatory impulses originating in experiences--whether phantasied or factual--of exclusion from the anticipated 'good'. Significant recent Jungian contributions to this area are considered and the absence of references to 'envy'--so characteristic of Kleinian discourse--is noted. The ongoing value of integrating Jungian and Kleinian approaches is affirmed.     

Paid Work and Domestic Labor in Disadvantaged Communities on the Outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon

This article explored the association between economic activity and the contribution to domestic labor in a Middle Eastern society. Analyses were carried out on cross-sectional survey data from 5,998 individuals, aged between 18 and 64 years, in three poor communities in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. Domestic labor was evaluated with a composite index that takes into account both the type of task performed and the level of involvement. Housework categories included core household chores, care giving, financial management, home management, and home/car maintenance. Results showed that women continue to do most of the domestic labor in the three communities. However, women’s load of domestic labor decreased as they joined the labor market, whereas men’s contribution to domestic labor increased with involvement in paid work. Relatively speaking, the difference in contribution to housework between house members engaged and not engaged in paid labor was much higher for women than it was for men.     

The profession of ferryman: Considerations on the analyst's internal attitude in consultation and in referral1

Psychoanalytic consultation is an interview with a patient who will not be taken in treatment by the consultant analyst, but who will be sent to another, perhaps specifi cally chosen, colleague after one or more assessment sessions. This practice is becoming increasingly important since, besides traditional private relationships between consultant and patient, it is now common in many specialized centres affi liated to offi cial psychoanalytical institutions. The author explores some fundamental aspects of the analyst's internal attitude in consultation: motivation to know; a ‘concave’ attitude to listening; responsibility in proposing suitable technical choices and referral to a further specialist; empathy and partial identifi cation; the balance between authentic experience in the consultation and risks of seduction; internal links within the community of colleagues; the technique for sending patients on. He presents a clinical example, specifi cally aimed at reproducing the internal attitude of the analyst, together with the necessary work that allows a diffi cult patient to initiate psychoanalytic treatment.     

Quality of Work Life as a Mediator Between Emotional Labor and Work Family Interference

Purpose  We adopted the conservation of resources model (COR, Hobfoll Am Psychol 44:513–524, 1989; Hobfoll in Stress, culture, and community: the psychology and philosophy of stress, Plenum, New York, 1998) to examine the associations among emotional labor, work family interference, and quality of work life. Design/Methodology/Approach  Cross-sectional, self-reported data were obtained from 442 Hong Kong Chinese service employees. Findings  Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses showed that surface acting was a salient correlate of work-to-family interference, even when organizational display rules and employees’ demographic information were controlled. Furthermore, quality of work life had partially mediated the relationship between surface acting and work-to-family interference. However, deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotion did not relate to work-to-family interference. Finally, we found that family-to-work interference was a salient correlate of the use of surface acting in workplace. Implication  This study provided useful information of how adopting different emotional labor strategies related to work family interference. Based on our results, the use of deep acting should be promoted in workplace because it related positively to quality of work life and it did not amplify the work-to-family interference. Originality/value  While past studies often explored the role of emotional labor as the precursor of work family interference, our study is among the first attempt to examine family-to-work interference as the antecedent of emotional labor. Additionally, we had also confirmed the role of quality of work life as an important mediator between emotional labor-work-to-family interference.     

Nonstandard career paths and profiles of commitment to life roles: A complex relation

The career paths (ascending, interesting, uninteresting, descending) of 124 White Canadian francophones (62 men, 62 women) who had experienced nonstandard and precarious work for the last three years were examined in relation to the participants’ profiles of commitment to three life roles (work, family, and duality, that is, investment in both career and family). The paths were derived from the content analysis of the data collected through semi-structured individual interviews. Quantitative tools were used to assess the importance of life roles and to compare the career paths as well as the commitment profiles with respect to specific and general anxiety. Among other results, a significant relationship was found between unsatisfying career paths and the duality profile, on the one hand, and higher levels of specific and general anxiety, on the other. The results are discussed with respect to the scientific literature. Implications for career counseling are suggested.     

The family myth: its deconstruction and replacement with a balanced humanized narrative

Abstract :  According to Carl Jung the mythopoeic activities of the collective unconscious contribute to the trajectory of personal individuation ( Segal 1998 ). The 'family myth' represents an imaginal narrative that emphasizes the importance of the family's founders, its collective values, and its position with respect to 'outsiders'. Sigmund Freud identified the importance of the Oedipal myth as the basis of nuclear family dynamics ( Rudnytsky 1992 ); however, the 'myth of the family' represents in reality a 'family of myths', each emphasizing different elements of potential interpersonal dynamics. But whereas some myths foster the child's optimal separation from parental influence and promote the process of individuation, others tend to hinder development.
One potentially deleterious form of the family myth tends to serve the narcissistic wishes of parents in their bid to maintain influence over the child by fostering the archetypal features of their role. The children who are the targets of the myth are thwarted in their psychological development by virtue of the fact that they are denied the opportunity to humanize their archetypal projections onto their parent(s). The result is a persistence of childlike attitude with respect to people and situations that they encounter outside the nuclear family. The persistent constellation of the child archetype is evidenced by features of the puer aeternus, with deficits in the ability to work, form stable adult relationships, and create a separate nuclear family. The significance of this type of family myth in the inappropriate preservation of puerile attitudes is examined and the desire of the offending parent(s) to promote their own immortality is explored. The contribution of the myth to the transference and transference resistance is explicated and suggestions are offered with respect to how to approach this critical issue in analysis.     

Contributive Justice and Meaningful Work

The dominant focus of thinking about economic justice is overwhelmingly distributive, that is, concerned with what people get in terms of resources and opportunities. It views work mainly negatively, as a burden or cost, or else is neutral about it, rather than seeing it as a source of meaning and fulfilment—a good in its own right. However, what we do in life has at least as much, if not more, influence on whom we become, as does what we get. Thus we have good reason also to be concerned with what Paul Gomberg has termed contributive justice, that is, justice as regards what people are expected and able to contribute in terms of work. Complex, interesting work allows workers not only to develop and exercise their capacities, and gain the satisfaction from achieving the internal goods of a practice, but to gain the external goods of recognition and esteem. As Gomberg’s analysis of the concept of contributive justice in relation to equality of opportunity shows, as long as the more satisfying kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition that goes with it. In this paper I examine the contributive justice argument, suggest how it can be further strengthened, arguing, inter alia, that ignoring contributive injustice tends to support legitimations of distributive inequality.