The burnout syndrome is a state of psychic pain that affects almost exclusively the social service sector operators, i.e. all those professions in which the operator-user relationship is central to the conduct of work. To be affected by this phenomenon are therefore areas of work in which the operators are in constant contact with the users and should cater for the needs of each individual. And ‘the case of doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, but also teachers, to mention only some of the professions involved.

The person suffering from burnout experienced a state of unease linked to the performance of his professional activity that begins to be experienced only as a source of stress. This leads to a progressive loss of interest and concentration and a cold and detached attitude in addition to the unpleasant feeling of not doing their job properly.

Early studies on burnout, although the phenomenon was known for some time, began in the seventies, before that in fact the phenomenon was considered a problem limited to a small number of players, mostly because of their personal temperament. With the further development of studies and research in academia, it was discovered that was not the case and that the burnout phenomenon closely tied to professional contexts consuming from the standpoint of emotional well-equipped with precise characteristics identified through appropriate assessment tools. Christina Maslach and Susan Jackson were to identify, in the eighties, the three main components of burnout syndrome: the ‘emotional exhaustion, which leads the operator to feel tired of his job, as empty, depersonalization, which is an attitude of coldness, detachment, often cynical and, ultimately, reduced personal achievement which induces a feeling of inadequacy that leads the employee to negatively judge themselves and their actions against you.

Studies conducted by the same Maslach showed that the three dimensions of the syndrome are a sort of chain reaction triggered by emotional overload which these workers are daily subjected. Places before a quantity of labor relations professionals perceived as emotionally overwhelming experience a feeling of mental exhaustion that is configured as emotional exhaustion, in response to this situation by implementing a defensive attitude by which they try to limit its emotional until put between himself and users a real wall that makes them look cool, detached and sometimes even cynical. From all this could bring about a feeling of not doing their job properly and, consequently, a feeling of failure to complete training. Even the personality characteristics of the operator appear to still have a role in the onset of the syndrome, however, according to Maslach to have the greatest impact on it are the characteristics of the worker maintains relationships with clients such as with colleagues and superiors.

Have studied the role of intrapsychic components of the individual in burnout syndrome was instead Ayala M. Pines. According to the author’s syndrome occurs mainly in those workers who, motivated in ‘pursue a particular profession, invest all their energies on raising it to its primary means of personal fulfillment. The syndrome is therefore concerned with those workers who live in the occupation as the primary mission of their life, which, before a working environment that does not respond to them, high initial expectations will experience a progressive loss of motivation and then to burnout.