This article focuses on the importance of the centrality of work so that the subject, in the adult phase, does not interrupt his process of constructing an identity by entering the public sphere - an interruption which generates suffering and over time tends also to generate a wide range of psychological, social and, in many cases, organic symptoms. When work no longer is central, i.e., when it fails as an operator of mental health, the massive and abusive practices of "alcoholization", often confused with alcoholism, can be used as a collective defensive strategy against pathogenic suffering. A certain way of working collectively with workers concerning the sense of their activities and tasks in a particular organization proved capable of turning around this picture, insofar as it replaced alcohol by the word.
Mental health and work; the psychopathology of work; the psychodynamics of work; alcoholism; collective defensive strategies; citizenship; psychology of work