THINKING ABOUT IT ...(psychology of jobs)(Brief Article)

My Job, My Self I'm intrigued by the psychological devastation that seems to accompany the current layoffs, not to mention much of the recent unemployment, as well as underemployment. It doesn't seem to be just a matter of money--it seems to be a matter of self-worth, of self-esteem; personal identity seems to be at stake.

It's an intriguing claim: one is what one does for money. And I suppose that insofar as one chooses what one does, it's valid. But one doesn't necessarily get to choose one's work. That's the false premise. Perhaps there was a time one could so choose--perhaps, between 1945 and 1980, if you lived in the U.S. or Canada, and if you were white, and if you were male, and at least lower middle class.

Certainly in many European and Asian countries, the state has told people what jobs they would have. Even in the U.S. and Canada, in war time, the state made that decision: a lot of men would not otherwise have chosen to be soldiers; a lot of women would not have chosen to work in munitions factories.

But political power is not the only factor that coerces one's career choice: economic pressures, as in the Depression, have not only determined what job one had, but whether one had a job.

And let's not forget social pressures: the `career' choices for people not privileged by sex, race, or class have always been less broad. Do you really think that every secretary chose, out of all the careers there are, to be a secretary? Social conditioning, whether it be by society-at-large, the school system, or the family, has always led us, pushed us, in a certain direction.

Even when the options are many, they are few: what are the odds that, of all the jobs available, both my father and my brother would choose one in the insurance business? Pretty good, considering that it's human nature to choose what's familiar. My guess is that my brother didn't even ...