places that are subject to powerful contradictions. And I try to be more Socratic than is usual when making positivistic surveys: I try to help them to express what they suffer. I have discovered a lot of suffering which had been hidden by this smooth working of habitus. It helps people to adjust, but it causes internalized contradictions. When this happens, some may, for instance, become drug addicts. I try to help the person who is suffering, to make their situation explicit in a sort of socioanalysis conducted in a friendly and supportive way. Often when I do that, the individuals experience a sort of intellectual pleasure; they say 'Yes, I understand what happens to me.' But at the same time it is very sad. I lack the positive confidence that psychoanalysts have; they expect consciousness to be a tale of sadness, and respond with sadness when the individual says 'Look what happened to me. Isn't it terrible?' To some extent social work is like that: when you do it, it punishes you. This is a situation that arises very often, and it does not contradict what I say about doxa. One may be very well adapted to this state of affairs, and the pain comes from the fact that one internalizes silent suffering, which may find bodily expression, in the form of self-hatred, selfpunishment.

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