Psychic suffering and intellectual work

Abstract

This study aims to understand if intellectual work provides conditions for the emergence of psychic suffering in university teachers in a public institution of higher education. Use is made of the philosophical assumptions of historical materialism, work as a category of nuclear analysis of human phenomena, and also the categories of alienated labor and intellectual work. It also refers to mental illnesses as a social production. The research subjects were teachers with contracts of employment in exclusive dedication (RDIDP). It is used as an instrument for data collection, a questionnaire with closed and opened questions of opinative character. Responses were categorized and analyzed qualitatively and had not intention of giving statistical data. However, in order to better display, the same percentage of the sample are presented, among which one third (29.6%) have some health problem after entering university. Of those, 15,5% are related to the organization of work, 5,6% to the working conditions, 2,8% concomitantly to the conditions and the organization of work. The results indicate that the organization of work in a public university has shown itself as a space of psychic suffering, but also of alienation.