What can jobs and work provide according to the speaker?

F: Do you view work as a burden or a satisfaction? Are you a workaholic? Find the answers to question like these in the following dialogue — we are having Professor Leonard R. Sayles with us today. So Mr. Sayles, (1) what do you think jobs and work provide?
M: (1) Jobs and work do much more than most of us realize to provide happiness and contentment. We’re all used to thinking that work provides the material things of life — the goods and services that make possible our modern civilization. But we are much less conscious of the extent to which work provides the more intangible, but more crucial, psychological well-being that can make the difference between a full and an empty life.
F: So work is more than a necessity for most human beings.
M: You can say that again. It is the focus of their lives, the source of their identity and creativity. Rather than a punishment or a burden, work is the opportunity to realize one’s potential. (2) Many psychiatrists heading mental health clinics have observed its healing effect. A good many patients who feel depressed in clinics gain renewed self-confidence when gainfully employed and lose some, if not all, of their most acute symptoms. Increasingly, institutions dealing with mental health problems are establishing workshops in which those too sick to get a job in "outside" industry can work, while every effort is exerted to arrange "real" jobs for those well enough to work outside.
F: And the reverse is true, too. I heard that for large numbers of people, the absence of work is harmful to their health.
M: Exactly. Retirement often brings many problems surrounding the "What do I do with myself?" question, even though there may be no financial cares. Large numbers of people regularly get headaches and other illnesses on weekends when they don’t have their jobs to go to. It has been observed that unemployment, quite aside from exerting financial pressures, brings enormous psychological troubles and that many individuals deteriorate rapidly when jobless.
F: But why? Why should work be such a significant source of human satisfaction?
M: (3) A good share of the answer rests in the kind of pride that is stimulated by the job and by the activity of accomplishing. The human being longs for a sense of being accomplished and of being able to do things, with his hand, with his mind, with his will. Each of us wants to feel he or she has the ability to do something that is meaningful and that serves as a tribute to our inherent abilities. It is easiest to see this in the craftsman who lovingly shapes some cheap material into an object that may be either useful or beautiful or both. You can also see the carpenter or bricklayer stands aside and admires the product of his personal skill.
F: Does working in a team also provide this sense of accomplishment?
M: (4) Yes. I remember viewing half dozen workers in a chair factory. Their job was to bend several pieces of steel and attach them so that a folding chair would result. While there were ten or twelve of these "teams" that worked together, one in particular was known for its perfect coordination and lightning-like efforts. The men knew they were good. They would work spurts for twenty or thirty minutes before taking a break — to show themselves, bystanders and other groups what it was to be superbly skilled and self-controlled, to be the best in the factory. When I talked with them, each expressed enormous pride in being a part of the fastest, best team. And this sense of belonging to an accomplished work group is one of the distinctive satisfactions of the world of work.
F: How nice!
M: (4) Beyond the team and the work group, there is the organization, whether it is company or hospital or university. The same pride in being part of a well-coordinated, successful unit is derived from being part of a larger collectivity. Working for a company thought of as being part of the best in the community can provide employees with both status and self-confidence.
F: Then what’s your view on workaholics?
M: Somebody ought to defend the workaholic. These people are unjustly accused, abused, and defamed — often termed sick or morbid. Workaholics are achievers. There is a national conspiracy against excellence — an undue admiration of commonness and mediocrity. It is as though we are against those who make uncommon sacrifices because they enjoy doing something.
F: Some popular psychologists say that the workaholic has an inferiority complex which leads to overcompensation. What do you think?
M: (5) This is certainly not the case. Inferiority, or low esteem, describes laziness more accurately than it describes dedication. We do not seem to realize that very little excellence is achieved by living a well-balanced life. Edison, Ford, Einstein, Freud all had single-minded devotion to work whereby they sacrificed many things, including family and friendship. The accusation is made that workaholics bear guilt by not being good parents or spouses. But guilt can exist in the balanced life also. Consider how many "normal" people find, at middle age, that they have never done anything well — they are going to settle for less than what they could have become.