ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the foundation for a comprehensive burnout theory, to eventually supersede a lot of the laundry list approaches of the past. In fact, burnout researchers have rediscovered something that has long been known elsewhere by other names. Fields of research that contribute to an understanding of burnout include: crisis theory, frustration and aggression, reactance and learned helplessness, incentive theory, psychosomatics, and psychology of conflict. Crisis is a term almost as ill defined as burnout. Psychosomatics is another field of relevance for burnout. Coping with second-order stress and the concomitant loss of autonomy may be successful and eventually may lead to growth in the sense of a more realistic world model and enhanced competence in handling the world and oneself. Action planning may become excessively perfectionistic, inadequate because of panic, unduly sloppy, or replaced by quasi-automated reacting.
