Freudenberger compares burnout to a burned out building: a crumbling shell with "a great emptiness inside." He uses many case studies and writes with sensitivity:

Do you have a sense of depletion, of being burned out? Is something wrong with the relationship you’re in? Does the position you worked so hard to attain seem meaningless to you now? Do your children seem restless and remote? Are co-workers goofing off? Is the organization a maze of red tape and foul-ups? Are friends no longer stimulating...would you like to pack it all in and run away?

He defines burnout: "To deplete oneself. To exhaust one’s physical and mental resources. To wear oneself out by excessively striving to reach some unrealistic expectation imposed by oneself or the values of society." He asks readers to keep key words and phrases in mind—"deplete," "exhaust," "excessively striving," and "unrealistic expectation"—to sense how they seem to fit one’s situation. He also provides an excellent self-examination to consider how work, family, and social situations affect a person (a rating of 1 represents little or no change; 5 reflects a great deal of change):

• Do you tire more easily? Feel fatigued rather than energetic?
• Are people annoying you by telling you, "You don’t look so good lately."
• Are you working harder and harder and accomplishing less and less?
• Are you increasingly cynical and disenchanted?
• Are you often invaded by a sadness you can’t explain?
• Are you forgetting (appointments, deadlines, personal possessions)?
• Are you increasingly irritable? More disappointed with people?
• Are you seeing close friends and family members less frequently?
• Are you too busy to do even routine things like make phone calls, read reports, or send out Christmas cards?
• Are you suffering from physical complaints (aches, pains, headaches, a lingering cold)?
• Do you feel disoriented when the activity of the day comes to a halt?
• Is joy elusive?
• Are you unable to laugh at a joke about yourself?
• Does sex seem like more trouble than it is worth?
• Do you have very little to say to people?

According to Freudenberger, a score of 0 to 25 means that one is O.K. One should take inventory if scoring 26 to 35. A tally of 36 to 50 indicates that one is a candidate for burnout. A count of 51 to 65 infers that one is burning out; over 65 places one in physical and mental danger.

Additional and helpful sections include "Who Survives the System," "Group Burn-Out," "Minorities and Burn-Out," "Burn-Out and the Poor," "Society: Breeder of Burn-Out," "False Cures," and "Closeness: A Real Cure."

cCYS

Freudenberger, H.J. (1980). Burn-out: The high cost of high achievement: What it is—and how to survive it. Anchor Press.

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