Achievement-subjects cannot be gratified because recognition requires an Other who is absent.

Evidence

The absence of relation to the Other causes a crisis of gratification. As recognition, gratification presupposes the instance of the Other (or the “Third Party”). It is impossible to reward oneself or to acknowledge oneself. For Kant, God represents the instance of gratification: He rewards and acknowledges moral accomplishment. Because the structure of gratification has been disturbed, the achievement-subject feels compelled to perform more and more. The absence of relation to the Other, then, represents the transcendental condition for the crisis of gratification to arise in the first place. However, contemporary relations of production are also responsible. A definitive work [Werk], as the result of completed labor [Arbeit], is no longer possible today. Contemporary relations of production stand in the way of conclusion. Instead, one works into the open. Conclusive forms [Abschlußformen] with a beginning and an end prove wanting. — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 99

Categorization

• XREF: The crisis-of-gratification mechanism is the psychological engine behind the reader’s noted symptom pattern (exhaustion with no one to blame). Connects to Kant’s God-as-gratifier passage at [97]. — connects to: Access to another’s being requires their self-knowledge, which is impossible