BMJ 1999;319:1633-1635 ( 18 December )

Education and debate

How work can be made less frustrating and conversation less boring

Editorial by Clever

Theodore Zeldin, fellow. 

St Antony's College, Oxford OX2 6JF

theodore.zeldin@sant.ox.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The frustrations of relationships and of work are at the root of much illness in today's society. Technology cannot do much more to relieve them; it cannot tell people who to love, what to think, where to go, or what to do for a living. So medicine, which remedies the suffering which results from such decisions, needs additional partners to modify behaviour harmful to health. To find these partners it must reconsider its assumptions about how people come to change their behaviour, both in private and at work.


Table Removed (Available Only in the Full Text)


    Methods

This article is based on two books I have written, one of which contains long bibliographies. 1 2 It also reflects the first findings of my ongoing project on the future of work, supported by the European Commission, which involves studying a wide range of occupations from the point of view of how their frustrations could be diminished.

    How do people change their ways?

We have long been taught that . . . [Full text of this article]
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