Du und Dein Stress : Eine soziologische Rekonstruktion des Burnout-Diskurses und der Arbeit am inneren Gleichgewicht (Volume 37)

Alexander Hirschfeld

• Publisher: Bamberg University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783863096793
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Like no other, the term burnout sums up the psychological suffering experienced under current working conditions. But how can you get around the problem and who is actually responsible here? The present work addresses these questions from a sociological perspective. Instead of getting involved in the discourse, it is reconstructed which modes of thinking dominate the debate. As the results show, the discourse is primarily characterized by an orientation towards the autonomous subject and the ideal of "working on inner balance", which makes dealing with stress appear as a process of self-awareness and economic accounting. This language of personal perception banishes any objectification of psychological stress from the discourse; instead of being overwhelmed by work, burnout sufferers appear as slaves to their own expectations. Through this individualization and normalization of the problem, the perspectives of other professions, especially those of sociology and medicine, are marginalized. The burnout discourse is not a singular phenomenon, but is to be classified much broader in terms of diagnosis. It is an expression of a general rise in psychology since the middle of the 20th century, which is one of the most important factors in the dismantling of social and welfare state institutions.