Abstract

MENDES, Ana Magnólia Bezerra  and  SILVA, Rogério Rodrigues da. Religious leader's pleasure and suffering at work in a neopentecostal and in a traditional protestant organization. PsicoUSF [online]. 2006, vol.11, n.1, pp. 103-112. ISSN 1413-8271.

This study intended to show the impact of the transformation of religious organizations over the pleasure and suffering experiences of their leaders, as well as the way they deal with it, when it exists. Two protestant religious organizations, one neopentecostal and the other traditional, were studied because of their importance in Brazilian religious context as well as their structural differences in hierarchy, dogma, and developing strategies. Individual semi-structured interviews were done with 10 leaders of each organization. The results indicated that pleasure is connected to feelings of identification, pride, realization and recognition at work. Suffering experience is connected to physical and emotional drain, feeling of devaluation, distress and guilt attributed to a diversity of activities, pressure for productivity, excessive work load, moral demand, high expectations and constantly dealing with psychic social community problems. Generally speaking, there are similar levels of pleasure-suffering experiences to other professions, including the way of coping with suffering, with the exception of problems spiritualization.

Keywords : Neopentecostals; Traditional protestants; Pleasure-suffering.

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