We spend years building a career: recognition, responsibilities, a position. And at some point, an uncomfortable question arises: Is this what I really wanted?
Not necessarily because something went wrong. Often, everything seems to be in place. The career progresses, recognition is there. But what once motivated us no longer does so in quite the same way, and our relationship with work, with others, and with ourselves begins to change.
spent more than two decades in corporate environments, founding and leading transformation and innovation projects. Today, as a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, I encounter some of these questions from a different perspective: in my consulting room, listening to people whose lives appear to be in order and who nevertheless sense that something has shifted.
For more than a century, psychoanalysis has explored the distance between what we desire, what we achieve, and the satisfaction we expect to find. Freud and Winnicott, each in their own way, offer perspectives that help us understand this experience.
The Unease That Comes with Achievement
The common assumption is that suffering comes from what we lack: the promotion that never came, the recognition we never received. In 1916, Freud described something that challenges this intuition.
Em Those Wrecked by Success., parte do ensaio Alguns tipos de caráter encontrados no trabalho psicanalíticoIn Those Wrecked by Success, part of his essay Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work, he examines people who become ill precisely when a long-pursued desire is finally within reach. In these cases, the obstacle no longer lies in external circumstances. Instead, unconscious psychological forces, linked to conflict and guilt, prevent the person from enjoying what they have achieved.
Freud also turns to literature. Lady Macbeth, who relentlessly pursues the crown only to unravel after obtaining it, is one of his examples. Rebecca West, a character in Ibsen's work, is another: she attains the position she had long sought, only to relinquish it.
Freud was not describing contemporary dissatisfaction with professional life. Yet his argument challenges a widespread assumption: that fulfilling a desire necessarily brings satisfaction. Sometimes, the fulfillment of a desire brings to the surface a conflict that remained silent while the desire was still unfulfilled.
A Life That Works, but Doesn't Feel Entirely Our Own
Winnicott approaches the question from a different perspective. In his 1960 paper on the true and false self, he describes psychological organizations in which adaptation to the demands of the environment becomes predominant.
The false self is neither a social mask nor an artificial personality. It is a defensive organization that can even protect what is most spontaneous in a person's experience. On the outside, life functions well: responsibilities are fulfilled, expectations are met, results are achieved. Internally, however, when this adaptation becomes excessive, feelings of futility, emptiness, and unreality may emerge. Everything is done correctly, yet nothing feels genuinely one's own.
This does not mean that there is a true professional identity hidden beneath our choices, waiting to be discovered. For Winnicott, the question concerns the possibility of experiencing one's own existence as real, with spontaneity and creativity, rather than living primarily in response to the demands of the environment.
This leads to another question: how much of the path we have built has been shaped by the expectations we encountered along the way?
Freud and Winnicott describe different phenomena, and neither perspective applies to everyone who feels dissatisfied with their career. Yet both challenge the assumption that success and personal fulfillment are equivalent. What we achieve and how we experience those achievements belong to different dimensions. They may go hand in hand, but not necessarily.
Work, Recognition, and What We Desire
In the corporate world, we learn to set goals, evaluate performance, and measure results. Promotions, responsibilities, and recognition become legitimate ways of assessing a career. Work provides the material means to sustain our lives, relationships, and genuine opportunities for personal fulfillment.
Yet what can be measured professionally does not always correspond to how we experience our own lives. A promotion may be a long-awaited achievement and still provoke anxiety. A leadership position may bring recognition while also creating the feeling of constantly having to meet others' expectations. A career built with dedication may gradually lose the meaning it once held, without this necessarily implying that it was the wrong choice.
Over the years, we build an identity around what we do. Our position, our responsibilities, and the way colleagues perceive us become part of how we see ourselves. This is why questioning our work can also mean questioning something about ourselves.
When someone begins to wonder whether they still desire what they have built, they are not necessarily facing a decision about their next professional step. They may be beginning to question why certain paths became so important: what they were seeking through recognition, whose expectations they were trying to meet.
These questions do not arise only during difficult times. Sometimes, they emerge precisely when we have already achieved what once seemed to justify so much effort.
What Psychoanalysis Does with These Questions
Psychoanalysis does not offer ready-made answers about which path to take. It is not the analyst's role to decide whether someone should change careers, accept a promotion, or remain where they are. The work consists of creating a space where a person can speak about their experiences, their choices, and the history of the desires and expectations that underlie them: those we have inherited, those we have developed, and the relationship we have established with our own desires.
This requires a form of listening that does not rush toward solutions. The question “Is this what I really wanted?” does not have to lead immediately to a new decision. First, it is worth understanding why the question has emerged now, what is being called into question, and what meanings that professional journey has acquired over time.
What appears to be a professional problem is not always solely about work. Family relationships, expectations of recognition, and earlier experiences are often involved as well. Every person's story calls for its own kind of listening.
When Distress Deserves Attention
Not every loss of enthusiasm for work is a question of desire. It may be related to demanding or exhausting working conditions, changes in personal life, or developing health difficulties. Persistent low mood, a diminished capacity to experience pleasure, significant changes in sleep, severe exhaustion, or difficulties functioning in everyday life deserve clinical assessment and, when necessary, the involvement of other healthcare professionals.
In clinical practice, it is essential to consider both the uniqueness of each person's experience and the concrete circumstances in which they live and work. Sometimes, the first step is not to find an answer, but to recognize that something needs to be heard.
Beyond the Career
Throughout our professional lives, we make choices, take on commitments, and build paths that become part of who we are. Some continue to feel meaningful. Others may need to be reconsidered. And there are moments when we cannot quite identify what has changed; we simply notice that the way we experience certain aspects of life is no longer the same.
This does not necessarily mean starting over. Perhaps it is possible to look at what we have built without feeling compelled to constantly justify it, to recognize its value without expecting it to provide all the answers, and to allow room for questions that, for a long time, had no place in our lives.
Because the question is not always about changing careers. Often, it is about understanding the place that work has come to occupy in our lives.
Questioning the path we have taken does not mean rejecting what we have built. Sometimes, it means recognizing that there is something within ourselves that deserves to be heard.