In recent months, I have received several inquiries from those in the popular media about what positive psychology has to say to people who have lost their jobs. I have by-and-large demurred, because I wasn't sure what to say other than to offer aphorisms about being optimistic and to conclude with "it's the economy, stupid." And none of that seemed very positive or very helpful.
My thinking has now changed, at least a bit, after reading a book written by European social psychologist Marie Jahoda (1907-2001).
As a positive psychologist, I was familiar with Jahoda through her 1958 book - Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health - which made the case for understanding psychological well-being in its own right, not simply as the absence of disorder or distress. Her argument is of course the premise of contemporary positive psychology, and one can wonder why it took four decades for other psychologists to answer her challenge.
In her 1958 book, Jahoda surveyed what previous thinkers - mainly clinicians - had to say about mental health and synthesized their views by proposing half a dozen underlying processes presumably producing or reflecting psychological health: acceptance of oneself; ongoing growth and development; personality integration; autonomy; accurate perception of reality; and environmental mastery.
Her analysis of positive mental health is persuasive, although upon first reading it, I was puzzled that it did not include good relationships with other people or the strengths that make these possible. I decided to read more of what Jahoda written and came across her 1982 book Employment and Unemployment. A Social-Psychological Analysis. In it, she stressed social contact and shared purpose as vital for well-being. So, Jahoda foreshadowed my own summary of positive psychology that "other people matter."
But that's not why I'm writing this blog entry. The book offers some genuinely good ideas about employment and unemployment from the perspective of psychology, and her ideas seem as relevant now as when the book was written some thirty years ago.
The thesis of the book is simple, something we probably all know but need to have pointed out: Employment is not the same thing as work. Employment is what people do in order to earn money. Work, in contrast, is what people do in order to live a fulfilling life. People without paid jobs can and do have fulfilling lives, so long as they have work. Conversely, people with well-paying jobs can be miserable, if they do not have work.
The problem in modern economies is that employment provides the sole source of work for many people. And unemployment, when it occurs, leaves them not only without income but also without work and the fulfilling life that work makes possible.
How does work enable the psychological good life? To answer this question, Jahoda surveyed the European and United States research literature from the 1930s and the 1970s on the psychological consequences of unemployment versus employment. She identified five important features of the employed life and thus of work.
1. It imposes a time structure on the day and thereby on our experience. Much as we celebrate leisure, Jahoda made the interesting point that leisure time is valued only when it is scarce, a complement to work as opposed to a substitute.
2. It enlarges the scope of relationships beyond those of the immediate family or neighborhood where one lives.
3. It provides meaning through the shared purposes and activities of a social group.
4. It assigns social status and clarifies personal identity. Work (or employment) need not be "high status" to meet this need.
5. It requires regular activity.
Note that none of these features requires paid employment.
One implication of these findings is that positive psychologists might be able to help those who have lost their jobs, not by finding or creating jobs for them (worthy as those endeavors would be) but by suggesting ways to engage in work and thereby satisfy the basic psychological needs that may have vanished along with their jobs.
You readers are smart enough to deduce how this can be done for given people in given circumstances.
Jahoda was not naïve. (How could anyone imprisoned by fascists in the 1930s and later forced to flee her native Austria to avoid the death camps be naïve?) She concluded her book by observing that "Work not in order to earn a living is for some, for some length of time, an appropriate alternative to employment if they can manage to live within their financial support from public funds or belong to the lucky few who have private means" (p. 94).
In the long run, most people need jobs. In the short run, maybe positive psychology has something helpful to say.
References
Jahoda, M. (1958). Current concepts of positive mental health. New York: Basic Books.
Jahoda, M. (1982). Employment and unemployment. A social-psychological analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
