“Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.”
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
According to Carl Jung, when we lose what he called the ‘symbolic’ dimension of our work and understand it only in economic terms, we experience suffering. What Jung calls symbolic, Dostoevsky, in the quote above, calls ‘meaningful work’.
Dostoevsky and Jung may use different language to describe the consequences of our modern work condition, but their conclusions are essentially the same -- the lack of meaning in our work is a cause of suffering.
From the perspective of depth psychology, we do not have a deep enough imagination about our work for it to support us properly. We see in it only a source of income and not a source of meaning. Because we put the priority on economics instead of meaning, we get the kind of situation, says Jungian Analyst James Hillman, in which we “adapt people to work, [instead of] adapting work to people.”
In other words, we put the burden of responsibility--for health, for productivity, for happiness--on the person and not on the overall work situation. If something is wrong, it must be with the individual and not their work or working conditions. Many people suffer at their work for years because they are bearing the responsibility for their unhappiness on the job.
One man I worked with once told me how he would drive around the block where his office building was located 10 to 20 times each morning to put off going in to work until the very last minute possible. He was convinced there was something wrong with him, that he was lazy or irresponsible or somehow fundamentally flawed. “I have a good job with good pay. I shouldn’t want more than that,” he said.
But if a good job is not a good job for you, then most of time it doesn’t matter how good the pay is and, yes, you should want more than that. In the course of our work together, that man eventually came to see that it wasn’t him that was the problem. It was ‘him-in-that-particular-work’ that was the flaw. In his old job he felt like a misfit, but he came alive when he found work that could be an expression of his uniqueness.
“Most of us put a great deal of time into work, not only because we have to work so many hours to make a living, but because work is central to the soul’s opus.”
Moore continues:
“We are crafting ourselves--individuating, to use the Jungian term...The job and the opus are related insofar as work is an extension or reflection of yourself.”
Our lives cannot be separate from our work because our lives do not stop when we are at work. We spend most of our waking hours at work. It should be something that contributes to a deep and satisfying experience of living.
Finally, Moore offers this warning for when our work does not reflect our individuality. In such cases, “the soul suffers.” And this not only affects the individual. We are all affected:
“The whole of society suffers a wound to soul when we allow ourselves to do bad work.”
In my own practice, I used, primarily, to see mid-life career changers. Today, I work as much with twenty-something individuals making career transitions as I do with those making a career change at 50.
Depth psychology would say that this trend reflects not just the needs of individuals, but of the whole culture, for work with purpose and meaning.
It is never too early for a career transition to more meaningful work. It is never too late, either. Changing careers at any age--whether at 35 or 55 or beyond--is not an easy change to make, but it can be a vital--and vitalizing--one.