By PAULO VITOR GROSSI*
Burnout: a symptom of the capitalist machine that consumes humans as “disposable capital”. While the market generates the disease, it offers superficial cures in pills, without listening to the root of the suffering.
“But we were raised this way, how can we escape this capitalist addiction?”
Yes, it is in this context that most of us were born, practically all of us, or did anyone here grow up in another social system? It happens. But yes, the superego tells us to consume more, and we are completely ready to do so due to this great and continuous exposure to the capital system. We find addiction more than normal, the idea of having, assimilating in excess, or in a customized way if a client so requests. These are the symbolic effects of the capitalist system that we must survive. This whole narrative of suffering is caused by the market. The rules dictated by the market will always be attractive, even when they do all these evils to workers, leading more and more people to therapy every day. What the market says is that it is easy, it is legal, I mean, it is legalized to exploit you in this insatiable exchange. The market even thinks that anyone can do it! This excludes the reach of each person. Putting the question another way, they give and take away, and even when it comes to offering a cure, it is a market cure, I am talking about doping with antidepressants. Capitalism generates people's dissatisfaction in a way that borders on colonialism, a recolonization based on medicines, to then offer palliatives for the ills that they themselves created. In these cases, it is good to remember that this does not eliminate the problem, it only moves it away, everything is for the time being, easily replaceable. Psychotherapy indicates that what comes from the mind needs to be looked at and listened to with the utmost care, judiciously assisted to truly understand the situation of each subject; that is, the fact that formal medicine prescribes all these antidepressant pills without understanding the root of individuals' disorders is very frivolous, hasty, and tends not to produce the expected results for patients with their conflicts, when it does not develop other conditions. Or have you ever bought any medicine for the unconscious? This is not a criticism of the pharmaceutical industry, we all know the wonders of 21st century medicine, but just a slap on the wrist for extrapolating indications and prescriptions without due investigation. Advertising itself facilitates the mistake. Not to mention self-medication, often encouraged in the shorts and reels we receive every day.
This way of thinking and producing capitalist values through people's physical and mental health is very unstable. Every Human Being needs attention and care, to be heard and seen as an equal. Any kind of reasoning helps at this time.
“Tell me more about this depreciation of human beings, please.”
Incredibly accepted, there is a bizarre calculation of depreciation of human capital, a misuse of people, of workers while the labor market uses and discards these individuals without the real care that is proper to true human beings. We are all people! There is a lack of respect in these relationships. So much so that it borders on citing many names that the author would be forbidden to say!
Guilt and pressure accompany exhausted individuals on the verge of Burnout. It is a consequence of how a stressor system shapes this Being in the face of the impossibility of keeping up with a world that only allows for speed, thus relegating idleness to discredit and so many moral factors. It is hard to harp on about this so much! But who has never been criticized for wanting to do nothing? One employee even becomes an accuser of another! What to do with these employees “incapacitated” by the wear and tear and psychological suffering caused by exhaustion? We think about what to do when it has already happened. It is a shot in the dark. Who is going to pay this bill? This after having lost their self-esteem and their satisfaction at work. Even Society acts with its prejudices, rejecting these individuals, exposing their fragility; they will say: “it is because he is the one who cannot do it”, “she is the one who fell ill”. In any case, everyone is a victim of a degree of social distancing, victims as if sucked into this system that generates Burnout. It's not just a word, it's a syndrome!
Does feeling like a failure seem like a positive, mature term? And what does mental exhaustion refer to, something beneficial and constructive for a better future? Hardly. Could this insensitivity have anything to do with the human race? Humans are mammals, that's right. Think about the characteristics that define Homo Sapiens. If you break down the term, “wise man” or “man who knows”, there is an indication. Cognitive characteristics such as rationality, self-awareness, the ability to reason or use symbolic language, and intelligence are the scientifically accepted designations for modern Man. They have nothing to do with the impersonality of factories. However, the modern individual is no different from other species in the Animal Kingdom just by the presence of all of these things. Homo Sapiens is also a mammal, and mammals are endothermic animals, that is, they maintain a constant body temperature. I speak of heat because heat is contact. This is fundamental. Without this mammalian factor, there is a sense of estrangement, people don't recognize each other, and even look away when they pass each other on the street or at work.
This is carelessness. People are not cogs or mere objects, so they should not be treated in this way, impersonally, from a distance. You don't have to accept it. Neglecting social interaction and socializing is dangerous.
The exploitation perpetuated by this neoliberal system, the capitalist system, is never fair. Discarding or replacing people, calling them human capital, clearly doesn't work because it is unnatural, just a pretentious illusion created centuries ago and that should no longer have a place in the 21st century. Isn't it time to erase the expression human capital from the popular imagination? What happens is that the binding was very well done, cunning minds imposed it, and to this day this, at the very least, methodology is accepted. All that remains for today is the escape of companies that do not adapt to humanized management. Who wants to continue? You decide. And do you know why you have this power? Because you are one of those who maintain this model, you who are the disseminating workforce. Without you to supply the companies, they cannot survive, and how much that weighs on them! It would be better to have fairer choices.
*Paulo Vitor Grossi é neuropsychoanalyst therapist.
Book excerpt Burnout Syndrome! Symptoms Analysis and Treatment (Present Editorial, 2025).
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