Mind over body: Physical and psychotherapeutic discourses and the regulation of the older worker

Abstract

We examine how physical and psychotherapeutic discourses regulate the identity work of older workers. We show that they have separate effects: physical discourse inferred that the loss of work for older workers would be permanent whereas psychotherapeutic discourse suggested that the solution to unemployment lay in the mind of older workers themselves. They also have combined effects through the notion of grief: older workers are expected to progress through the normative stages of grief to arrive at acceptance of job loss and continued exclusion from the labour market. Despite moments of resistance in the identity work of older workers, these individuals were subjected to these regulatory effects through three key processes: participation by individual older workers in these discourses through their own identity work; collaboration from a range of diverse actors in contributing to this identity work; and translation of the meaning as initial narratives are retold by other actors.