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The Transition from Education to Employment

The following article, written by Fiona Thompson, was published in the Saturday Guardian.  It picks up upon some research carried out by Charles Sutton that explores the extent to which individuals transferring from one domain to another, (for example: tertiary education to first permanent employment), re-experience the developmental phases typically associated with early life.

Do you have an oral fixation? Is your behaviour a bit anal? Or do you have a phallic obsession? Strange as it may sound, these rather personal questions may be relevant to your job.

According to new research, people can find the experience of their first job so traumatic they regress to child-like behaviour. Charles Sutton, business psychologist at Organizational Edge, discovered that new recruits can find themselves revisiting Freud’s well-known oral, anal, phallic and latent stages.

“When you start your first real job, you emerge from three or four years’ training, equipped with an array of skills, eager to take them into the workplace,” he explains. “But once there, you often find you’re not as in demand as you thought you’d be.”

Emma Drinkwater knows that feeling. “I had a good degree in English, writing skills and knew about office systems, but found I couldn’t use this knowledge in my first job at a university library. It was incredibly frustrating.”
Jason Riley, who graduated this summer, had a similar experience working for a magazine. “I thought I was going to knock them dead with my writing talent. Then they gave me all these menial, monkey-boy jobs. I was really annoyed.”

Sutton’s research at Birkbeck College (co-authored with Kate Mackenzie Davey) describes the various Freudian stages this kind of frustration can provoke. First is the oral stage, where children believe they’re at the centre of the universe. And it’s a shock when they realise they aren’t. “They can throw tantrums and make loud demands,” says Sutton. Recent graduates can find themselves resorting to the same kind of behaviour in an attempt to make themselves heard.

The next progression is the infamous anal stage. Where as a toddler might become obsessed by bowel movements, a graduate might deal with inner emotional chaos by focusing on structures, analysis and logical thinking. A woman who took part in the research demonstrated this behaviour, saying: “I don’t believe in poor quality. It’s got to be right.”

Next up is the phallic stage. For children, this is about unconscious sexual desires and coming to terms with parent / child relationships. “In this stage the graduate is learning about boss / employee relationships,” says Sutton. “You’ll challenge your boss a lot, often inappropriately and on a point you know you can’t win.”

And finally there is the latent stage. “At this point the child has resolved its internal conflicts and can focus on the external world,” says Sutton. “In work, you’re likely to feel reasonably confident and able to get the job done.” Riley remembers coming through this stage. “I’d become more inward-looking, surprised by the reality of the publishing industry. But I made an effort to get people to notice me, kept showing them my work, and after a while I was writing reviews.”

He believes it could help graduates to know about this new theory. “At the start of your first job, you’re going to feel a bit swamped and it would help to warn people what it’s going to feel like.” Employers initially found the idea amusing but generally welcomed the research. Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the Association of Graduate Recruiters, agree that: “It’s quite a trauma starting work, a very volatile time. I think it’s quite possible for people to regress and I recognise all of those stages. But not everybody reacts the same way.”

Sara Wright, group management development adviser for Uniq (formerly Unigate), says: “It does fit with the situational leadership training model. This shows that people are highly enthusiastic when they start work, then often hit a brick wall and get disillusioned when they realise how much they have to learn.”

Andrea Vowles, graduate resourcing manager at Asda, says: “I’ve witnessed all those reactions. We’re keen to ensure people don’t go through this traumatic stage and that they’re well aware of what awaits them when they join us.”

When graduates are clear about their role and given support, they are less likely to unravel emotionally. Jim Newton has found his first three months at Telsis, a telecoms supplier, wholly positive. “We always know what we have to do, we have our own projects, and there are people around to help us,” he says.

Increasingly, employers are realising that new graduates need emotional as well as practical support. So we have research that explores emotional turmoil and provides limitless opportunities for jokes. I wonder what Freud would make of that?