Depression, ADHD, and burnout stem from excess positivity rather than external threat

Evidence

Neuronal violence does not proceed from system-foreign negativity. Instead, it is systemic—that is, system-immanent—violence. Depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome point to excess positivity. Burnout syndrome occurs when the ego overheats, which follows from too much of the Same. The hyper in hyperactivity is not an immunological category. It represents the massification of the positive. — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 25

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is precisely the neuronal-pathology claim the reader flagged as contestable against an immunological reading — worth interrogating whether ‘ego overheating’ explains ADHD’s phenomenology.
• DEEPTHINKING: The key causal mechanism of the book (too much Same rather than too much Other) stated in its most condensed form.
• XREF: connects to: Today’s digital attention anxieties were anticipated by late-twentieth-century ADHD medicalization debates — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 23; Unlimited self-optimization becomes a new coercion producing depression and burnout

Related

• Contemporary pathologies are neuronal, caused by excess positivity rather than foreign negativity (similarity 0.84)
• Depression and burnout stem from excess positivity, not repression (similarity 0.82)
• Today’s digital attention anxieties were anticipated by late-twentieth-century ADHD medicalization debates (similarity 0.81)
• The imperative to achieve, not self-responsibility, causes burnout and depression. (similarity 0.81)