Labor analogous to slavery: The importance of the psychologist's role in the worker's mental health
Temas em Educ. e Saúde, Araraquara, v. 19, n. 00, e023004, 2023. e-ISSN: 2526-3471
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26673/tes.v19i00.17871 14
Slave labor and psychological suffering
Addressing issues related to worker health has been a constant concern for the social
sciences in recent decades. Laurell and Noriega (1989) and Dejours (1987) address the issue of
worker attrition, premature aging, pathological fatigue syndrome, sleep disorders, fatigue on
sexuality, chronic stress, and other effects attributable to the organization of work in the
capitalist mode of production.
When we talk about illness, we think of something associated with something more
serious, like depending on medical help or a hospital. For Tamanini (1997), the category of
suffering is used in different senses and may have antagonistic meanings. On a concrete level,
suffering means physical illness, headache, and high blood pressure. At the abstract level, it is
allied to psychic aspects, goes beyond the limits of experience of physical illness, and provides
cognitive elements. In this sense, suffering acquires multiple meanings, "strength" and
"weakness", vulnerability, determination, fear or courage, awakening positive or negative
emotions.
Santos (1999), in a study about the crew embarked in the Merchant Navy, verified that
the family assumes a role of utmost importance in the life of the worker, the main defensive
mechanism used by workers to face it being its distance the primary source of psychological
suffering and the focus on work, such fact is proven in many workers in situations analogous
to that of enslaved people who, away from their families, tend to suffer psychically. Initially,
stress arises with manifestations of anxiety and nervousness, later, in the face of powerlessness
to transform such conditions, physical and mental diseases arise as ways of stress expression;
Prado (2016, p. 287, our translation) describes the phases of stress and the symptoms of each
phase until the onset of the disease:
[...] stress produces defense and adaptation reactions to the stressor agent,
classified into alarm phase, resistance, and exhaustion. The alarm phase
begins with the stressful stimuli that provoke a quick response from the
organism (fight and flight). [...] In this phase, the changes observed in the
organism include increased heart and respiratory rates, blood pressure;
contraction of the spleen; release of glucose by the liver; blood redistribution,
and dilation of the pupils. In the resistance phase, the individual tries to adapt
to the new situation to reestablish the internal balance because the organism
presents greater wear and tear, memory difficulties, and is more vulnerable to
diseases. The most commonly observed symptoms are muscle tremors,
physical fatigue, discouragement, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and
emotional instability. Finally, the exhaustion phase consists of the extinction
of resistance due to failures in the adaptation mechanisms. It is considered the
most critical condition related to stress because, after repeated exposure to the
same stressor, the organism can develop serious diseases or even collapse.