WORK, SUBJECTIVITY AND MENTAL HEALTH: A CRITICAL READING OF NEOLIBERAL RATIONALITY

Abstract

This article analyzes the impacts of neoliberalism on the constitution of the subjectivity of the contemporary worker, articulating contributions from the Social Psychology of Work, Psychoanalysis, and Critical Theory. It begins with an understanding of neoliberalism not only as an economic model, but as a normative rationality that organizes lifestyles, regimes of truth, and specific forms of managing psychic suffering. Based on systematic theoretical-bibliographical research conducted with national and international publications from the last ten years (2015–2025) in recognized scientific research databases, it discusses how the logic of performance, self-entrepreneurship, and the individualization of responsibility for success and failure contribute to the increase in mental health issues related to work, such as burnout, depression, chronic anxiety, and self-harming behaviors. The results indicate that psychic suffering has been predominantly treated in an individualizing and adaptive way, through psychologizing and medicalizing discourses that conceal its social, political, and ideological determinants. It is argued that this process fulfills an ideological function by depoliticizing illness and reinforcing neoliberal normativity. It is concluded that understanding mental suffering requires its re-inscription within the social and collective sphere, demanding care practices that break with the logic of blaming the subject and adapting to suffering.