Christophe Dejours’ psychodynamic theory of work and its implications for leadership

International audiencePsychoanalytic approaches to leadership centre on emotions and the role of the leader as the manager of emotion (Gabriel, 2011). These perspectives have often focused on the dysfunctions of leadership, the way in which leaders contribute to ‘dark’ and unhealthy organizational lives. In contrast to such approaches, in this paper we draw from Christophe Dejours’ psychodynamic theory of work, in order to explore what role leaders could play to facilitate health in organizations. We first begin by providing a short overview of some psychoanalytic perspectives on leadership. We show that such approaches illuminate the emotions and fantasies entailed in leadership or in the bonds between leaders and followers. We then discuss Dejours’ psychodynamic theory, which provides a different view. This theory does not focus on the emotions and fantasies associated with leadership, but instead demonstrates the role of work in the affective and social life of the subject and the implications this has for leading/managing workers