Abstract:
The concepts burnout and alienation are routinely connected in a linear unproblematic trajectory
(Tomei et al., 2011) perpetuating more of an ideological conflation than providing any insight into
either concept. This is not due to the selection of shoddy analytic categories but to structural determinants
of thinking, more systemically interesting than the entities themselves. The author attempts
to problematize, politicise and polemicize the insipid commonsense understandings of
these classifications endemic in the counselling/addictions field. An informal discourse analysis
was conducted on an aggregate example based on observation over several years in teaching professional
practice. He concludes that the reported trajectory from alienation to burnout is more a
narrative around changing ideology diffusion than a robust appraisal of social science. Furthermore,
the concept of burnout serves to perpetuate, worsen and naturalise the problems it claims
to remedy by a facilitation of spiritualising acts of passivity. An appreciation of alienation on the
other hand enables awareness of the unnaturalness of current neo-liberal social structures. The
author concludes that the quazi-religious mantra of burnout invites the reader into a regime of
self-care/self-blame contradictions and proves its effectiveness not by applicability but repetition.
By continued use of the concept we reify the myth of burnout and grant it credence. The author
also describes how clinicians enact their own informal and invisible means of resistance to power
in the workplace where solidarity is enacted through humour and humanity.
