The making of burnout

Abstract

The concept of burnout has become ubiquitous in contemporary discussions of work stress in the post-industrial, service economy. However, it originated outside of the market, in the counter-cultural human service institutions of the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. This article explores the first decade of the development of the burnout concept, demonstrating how it represented a reaction against the counter-culture and the alternative institutions that emerged alongside it. Focused in particular on the work of psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger and social psychologist Christina Maslach, this article demonstrates how the burnout phenomenon inspired professional helpers to engage in self-care and reduce their commitment to clients. As burnout migrated from the human services into the broader business environment in the early 1980s, the dedication to social change through helping others would largely vanish, to be replaced by the idea that the best way to ‘serve’ customers and co-workers was by practising self-awareness and self-management.

Herbert J. Freudenberger e a constituição do burnout como síndrome psicopatológica

“…One paper was acknowledged by the literature as an especially important moment for the introduction of the concept of burnout as an object of academic study: "Staff Burn-out" (Freudenberger, 1974a). This statement can be supported by the fact that the literature in this field of research regularly highlights the importance of this particular text (Friberg, 2009;Heinemann & Heinemann, 2017;Hoffarth, 2016Hoffarth, , 2017Muheim, 2013;Schaufeli & Buunk, 2003;Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998;Schaufeli and others, 2009). This can also be perceived in quantitative terms by observing the number of citations that the article has and comparing it with other articles by Freudenberger.…”

“…How to define the scope of a research on burnout history, given such an array of possibilities? We prefer to follow Friberg (2009) and Hoffarth (2017), who focus on the period from the 1970s onward and search to analyze the subject from a critical conceptual and historical approach. Our restrictive choice was to study only what is explicitly treated as burnout (and, of course, its variations burnt out, burn out, burn-out), leaving aside the comparison with other diagnoses and also the search for a burnout not named as such.…”

Work-life balance, social support, and burnout: A quantitative study of social workers

“…Burnout along with secondary traumatic stress (STS) which refers to emotional trauma experienced vicariously, have been conceptualized as being the two components of compassion fatigue in professionals engaged in the helping professions such as nursing and social work (Stamm, 2002). In fact, the term burnout has become synonymous with stress caused by being overburdened by work duties in the social work profession (Hoffarth, 2017). Heavy caseloads, low wages, limited resources, time constraints and deadlines, conflict within the work climate, ethical dilemmas, and the structural organization within which individuals work are some factors associated with the manifestation of burnout in social workers (Ben-Porat & Itzhaky, 2015; Diaconescu, 2015; Iacono, 2017; McFadden, 2015; Willis & Molina, 2019).…”

Autoconsciência E Processos De Adoecimento Ocupacional: Estresse, Ansiedade, Depressão E Burnout

“…Ainda hoje, não há no Brasil um instrumento válido que mensure experiências dissociativas de modo holístico, para além da patologia . Além disso, estudos sobre a temática em questão exploraram estresse, ansiedade e depressão, porém, até onde se sabe, a relação com a autoconsciência ainda não foi estudada em países em desenvolvimento e os estudos sobre autoconsciência e burnout em outros países geralmente analisam áreas específicas de trabalho (médicos, professores, enfermeiros), componentes abrangentes e diversos entre si (Hernandez et al, 2015;Hoffarth, 2017) A autoconsciência pode ser definida como a capacidade de se tornar objeto da própria consciência e estar ciente de seus próprios processos internos e estados mentais . Além disso, pode ser compreendida como a associação de diferentes processos mentais os quais, quando integrados, geram uma experiência unitária .…”