Résumé
From an action-research based in the psychodynamics of workapproach, this article presents the suffering of supervisors who coordinate the support teams of the Service for Children and Families in a provincial organization in France. Four collective unstructured clinical interviews are conducted with the supervisors of the three provincial teams of the Service, paying particular attention to theanalysis of ethical suffering. Among the main findings we see are how the degradation of the quality of work -which involves a dimension of social work and another of legal and administrative work -and of deliberation, have gradually generated interpersonal conflicts. Different forms of aggressiveness or denigration of the work of colleagues, subordinates or bosses generated additional problems to the degradation of the quality of work. Thus, without a work collective that manages to work out the difficulties in the face of real work, the risk of seeing violence emerge increases. The analysis of the supervisors' work allowed us to study how the deterioration of vertical cooperation -and the lack of reference to a shared task -can influence not only the deterioration of the quality of work but also the health of the team members. The conclusions of this work show an increase in loneliness, ethical suffering and the risk of being the victim of violent acts or of acting out. The final discussion allows us to think about the relationship between thinking and the defensive strategies deployed by supervisors, in particular in the light of the notion of acrasia.