Abstract
Although the history of exhaustion theories and the search for medical cures for states of chronic exhaustion reaches back all the way to classical antiquity, diagnoses of exhaustion-related syndromes have risen sharply in recent years. The psycho-social, medical, and economic effects of exhaustion are a problem that attracts widespread public attention. The chapters collected in this volume address the growing concern with exhaustion from different disciplinary perspectives, reflecting on the causes of the epidemic of exhaustion we are currently witnessing, on cultural and historical differences in the assessment, theorisation, and frequency of exhaustion, and on the wider socio-political implications of specific exhaustion syndromes.
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- 1.
For an excellent discussion of recent mind-body research, see Jo Marchant, Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body (New York: Crown, 2016).
- 2.
According to this view, which understands exhaustion as intricately related to the ills of globalised neo-liberal capitalism, attempts to tackle exhaustion epidemics by recruiting more therapists specialising in CBT – a strategy proposed by a recent LSE report discussed in Alain Ehrenberg’s chapter – would seem hopelessly inadequate. Enhancing individual resilience, and problems of ‘focus, empathy, and self-control’, would appear a wrong-headed, even absurd approach, as it is clearly damaging external structures that need changing.
- 3.
See, for example, Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and Hans J. Markowitsch (eds), Emotions as Bio-Cultural Processes (New York: Springer, 2009).
References
Jo Marchant (2016) Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body (New York: Crown).
Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and Hans J. Markowitsch (eds), Emotions as Bio-Cultural Processes (New York: Springer, 2009).
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Neckel, S., Schaffner, A.K., Wagner, G. (2017). Conclusion. In: Neckel, S., Schaffner, A., Wagner, G. (eds) Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52887-8_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52887-8_14
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