May we start with economic change and mental health? Unemployment research seems to me to be itself in deep recession. There seems to be less research going on into its mental health consequences and politicians and commentators seem to have become preoccupied with the notion of job insecurity rather than unemployment.
Marie Jahoda: The Government pretends that unemployment is getting so much better. It is reduced but then, as we all know, the original statistics were an underestimate of the problem. I still think unemployment is a major issue.
David Fryer: Why do you think job insecurity has captured the imagination of so many people instead?
Marie Jahoda: Because it is so totally widespread, I think, and because fortunately so many Conservative MPs experience job insecurity at the moment! David Fryer: Do you think that there is much that can be learned from unemployment research which helps understand job insecurity? At one level they seem very closely related experiences, in that job insecurity is often a precursor of redundancy and many of the psychological experiences of job-insecure people are apparently similar in many respects to those of unemployed people. Yet the account with which you are most widely associated, in terms of the manifest and latent functions of employment, does not appear to be immediately relevant to understanding the experience of the job-insecure, given that the manifest and latent functions of employment are still being fulยฎlled for them.
Marie Jahoda: I think it is really the manifest function, namely the money that you earn and the social security of your family and yourself, which is threatened by job insecurity. It is a point which you have often made, this inability to plan for the future and the sheer fear of missing the manifest functionรof being able to earn your livelihood. I think these are the major things.