Author: Vladisav Jovanović
Status: Preprint
Version: v1.0 (2026-03-10)
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18946109
Burnout is usually treated as exhaustion. This paper treats it as insolvency: a system that can no longer afford the cost of staying coherent. In cheap coherence environments, coherence (narrative closure) is easy to produce while contact (constraint-bearing feedback: time, contradiction, cost, repair, consequence) is costly and often avoided. The psyche adapts by protecting coherence through persona-maintenance: the ongoing cost of staying legible, stable, and socially safe. Over time this creates maintenance inflation (rising costs to keep the same stability), boundary erosion, and debt accumulation. Burnout is the debt-collection event: the moment the system’s budget collapses and truth-load forces contact. The paper reframes recovery as structural repair: revision under cost, renegotiation of worth, restoration of boundaries (“the No”), and reduction of exported maintenance.
burnout; persona; Jung; maintenance; persona-maintenance; maintenance inflation; cheap coherence; coherence; contact; truth-load; boundary erosion; integrity; repair; collapse; answerability