The study introduces a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to the investigation of care in organizations. It examines 52 stories describing how employees care for one another in material and emotional ways and explores how the narration of care becomes mapped on to struggles with unconscious aspects of the self, variously subjugating the self to, and empowering the self from, existing power structures. The study finds that current conceptions of care facilitate an imaginary project to fix identity and therefore privilege a more disempowering practice of care. It also reveals that, if investigated from a Lacanian perspective, care can serve more empowering constructions of identity. Specifically, care can create a space in which divided subjectivity can surface and action can be freed from identity projects and the vulnerabilities to identity control this introduces. Implications for theorizing the function of care in relation to identity are discussed.

该研究引入了一种拉康主义的心理分析方法来调查组织中的护理。它研究了52个故事，这些故事描述了员工如何在物质和情感方面互相照料，并探讨了照料的叙事如何映射到与自我的潜意识方面的斗争中，以各种方式使自我屈服于现有的权力结构，并赋予其权力。该研究发现，当前的护理概念促进了一个假想项目，以解决身份认同问题，因此优先考虑降低护理能力的做法。它也表明，如果从拉康主义的角度进行调查，则照料可以为身份认同的建设提供更多支持。具体来说，照料可以创造一个空间，在该空间中分散的主观性可以浮出水面，而行动可以摆脱身份项目，从而避免身份控制的脆弱性。讨论了理论上与身份有关的护理功能的含义。