The Construction of Burnout Hegemony (1973–2023): Source Erasure, Retrospective Testimony, and the Making of Scientific Priority

The standard history of burnout presents Herbert Freudenberger and Christina Maslach as having identified the phenomenon independently and almost simultaneously in the early 1970s. This article tests that claim against a chronological documentary record covering the period from 1973 to 2023. Drawing on peer-reviewed publications, an archived technical report, citation practices, later historical syntheses, and retrospective interviews with Maslach published in 2017 and 2023, the article shows that the available record does not support the hypothesis of independent and simultaneous discovery. It reveals a more precise sequence: Freudenberger’s earlier formulation of burn-out as a clinical and syndromic problem between 1973 and 1975; the first documented occurrence of the term in Maslach’s record in 1973, within a report coauthored with Philip Zimbardo, where the word is attached to preexisting concepts of dehumanization and detached concern; citation practices that bypass Freudenberger’s strongest published sources in favor of weaker supports; and retrospective accounts that reorganize the field’s origin around a discovery narrative centered on Maslach. The article further shows that this reconstruction of priority extends beyond historical attribution. With the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the authority attached to the origin narrative takes an operational form: it helps define what the field can recognize, name, and measure as burnout. By tracing source erasure, the role of retrospective testimony, and the instrumental stabilization of the construct, this article reclassifies the early history of burnout as a dispute over scientific priority whose effects extend into the conceptual and empirical architecture of the field. Preprint version. This paper is currently under submission to a peer-reviewed journal.