UC Davis

This project traces the historical development of burnout as it moves from an ambiguous collection of feelings to a codified and measurable health condition that allows for critique of working conditions while also emphasizing individual responsibility for health. Using a mix of computational text analysis and qualitative content analysis, I trace changing meanings of burnout over time and across the three domains of psychology, management, and public depictions of burnout in the New York Times. While the components of burnout remain consistent after psychologists develop tools to measure it, specifically the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the strategies of action to address burnout change over time, as does the typical burned-out subject. I identify two broad groups that tend to be recognized and fore-fronted as the subjects suffering from burnout: constrained caring professionals and disengaged contingent professionals. The former have been the subjects of burnout research since burnout entered psychological discourses in the 1970s, as researchers were primarily conducting research or practicing alongside caring professionals (i.e. in medicine and education). Burnout was applied to the second group later, during a time of rapid economic transformation in the US that made the employment relationship for white collar workers less secure. Over time, as burnout expanded to different domains, its association with working conditions and power relations declined while frames that emphasized individual causes and solutions increased. My findings help to illustrate how the framing of burnout is shaped by different historical factors that may have implications for who is recognized as legitimately distressed, whether their distress rises to the level of a social or organizational problem or is perceived as self-inflicted, and the possibilities for individual, organizational, and/or policy-level solutions.