Everyday resistance in psychiatry through harbouring strategies

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to study emotion management by focusing on emotion labour in relation to organisational resistance in psychiatry. Drawing on focus group interviews and individual interviews with 11 therapists in psychiatry, and on theories of emotion management and harbouring work (i.e. managing emotion work and renewing energy in a team), we argue that individual workers in psychiatry have to create strategies on their own. The main findings show that emotions are harboured alone and resistance strategies created in solitude can be characterised as everyday resistance and organisational misbehaviour, performed in deep backstage spaces such as the bathroom.