Burnout: A Clinical Reading

Between Exhaustion and Subjective Collapse

The term “burnout” has become widespread across medical, media and managerial discourse. It refers to a state of physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion related to prolonged professional or relational overload. Yet in psychoanalytic circles, the concept remains controversial; analysts often favor notions like narcissistic collapse, fatigue of being, or crisis of meaning. Beyond terminology, it is the subjective experience that concerns the clinician: a body drained, desire extinguished, speech obstructed.

In clinical practice, burnout is never uniform. It does not present as a fixed entity but as a constellation of signs shaped by the individual’s history. It is not merely overwork or chronic stress, but a rupture in one’s relationship to self, others, the work environment — and sometimes, to the ideal that once structured them.

Julien, a 42-year-old executive, describes his daily life as an endless race. In session, he says: “I tick all the boxes, but I no longer feel anything. Even my son—I look at him as if he were someone else’s child.” His account reflects a deep disengagement, a disconnection between daily actions and psychic investment. The subject is present, active, but no longer experiences himself.

Claire, a nurse, seeks therapy after a long period on sick leave. She says: “I gave everything. Then one morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. As if my body decided to say no for me.” This abrupt bodily withdrawal—this somatic symptom—often signals a conflict between the ego ideal (the drive to fulfill a perfect, devoted image) and the subject’s actual limits. Burnout then emerges as a collapse of narcissism, a crumbling of one’s self-constructed identity.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, burnout can be seen as a crisis in primary narcissism: the early structure upon which the subject relies to feel existing, valued, and lovable. When external gratifications fail—professional setbacks, interpersonal conflict, a sense of uselessness—the subject confronts a void, an internal hollow that action had once helped fill.

Repetition is often at play. Some patients, unconsciously, replay scenarios of abandonment, sacrifice, or self-erasure rooted in early childhood. They exhaust themselves trying to satisfy an Other—whether hierarchical, familial, or imagined—at the cost of their own integrity.

Marc, a young teacher, describes a tyrannical relationship to his job: “I can’t say no, I have to be there for my students, just like my mother always made herself available to my father, even when she was unwell.” Family history surfaces in the speech. The symptom does not only speak of work, but of an older script where the Other’s desire overrides one’s own.

Therapeutic work aims to reinstate speech where the body has begun to cry out. It supports the subject in reclaiming psychic space, rhythm, and boundaries. Psychoanalysis does not offer standardized protocols but creates a framework where the symptom can be heard as message—not to be eradicated, but to be elaborated.

The uniqueness of each burnout experience calls for a suspension of fixed diagnosis, and instead, an attentive listening to what this psychic and bodily collapse reveals about the subject—their relationship to desire, to ideals, and to their own history.