What Makes a Person a Workaholic?
What exactly is considered a workaholic? There is no universally accepted medical definition. But psychologists have tried to distinguish workaholics from those who simply do their jobs.
When American psychologist Wayne Oates died in 1999, the New York Times published his obituary, which emphasized two facts in particular. First, he wrote 57 books in his lifetime. Secondly - and not coincidentally - he coined the concept of "workaholism", a term that came to be widely used in a 1968 article by Oates. In it, he confessed that he himself was addicted to the feeling of hard work as much as substance dependence, a kind of pathology.
Of course, he acknowledged that workaholism was more respectable than spending 1/5 of your day drinking - workaholism is more of a character quality, and a beneficial one at that, at least it goes in your obituary.
What exactly constitutes a workaholic, to be more precise? There is no universally accepted medical definition. But psychologists have endeavored to distinguish workaholics from those who simply do their jobs.
A 1992 article on how to measure this addiction noted that not only do workaholics work without restraint, but they are also unhappy at work. The latest diagnostic test tries to identify people who work without restraint and are miserable in withdrawal. Just like people who are addicted to gambling and drugs.
Even though the definition of workaholism is a bit fuzzy, many studies have tried to identify its physical and psychological effects. Researchers have found a relationship between it and sleep problems, weight gain, high blood pressure, anxiety and depression. Workaholic partners can find themselves in unhappy marriages. Studies of undergraduates have consistently found that children of workaholics score 72% higher on depression scales than children of alcoholics, and show higher levels of "paternalization. "Paternalization" is a term used in family counseling to describe sons or daughters who become parents to their own parents, sacrificing their own needs to accommodate the parents' emotional needs and pursuits."
Just how many people are workaholics? A recent estimate suggests that 10 percent of adults in the U.S. meet the definition of workaholics; the percentage reaches 23 percent among lawyers, physicians, and psychologists. Many people like to call themselves workaholics whether they are or not.In 1998, 27% of Canadians reported being workaholics on the General Social Survey, and 38% of them earned more than $80,000 a year. Among those with no income, 22% also considered themselves workaholics! They would be housewives and students.
This situation may reflect certain social characteristics; psychologist Bryan Robinson has said that work addiction may be the most decent psychological problem. In one of the few economics studies that have looked at workaholism, researchers have found that people with high levels of education and wealth are more likely to postpone retirement than those with low incomes, a possible sign of workaholism.
Postponing retirement certainly gives a new twist to the idiom "to bow and scrape to the end of one's life, and then to the end of one's life". As far as I know, the concept of workaholism doesn't get much attention in Japan, where long hours are the norm. The term "karoshi" (death by overwork) originates from Japan and is used to describe death by overwork. Death by overwork has become the leading cause of wrongful death suits in Japanese courts.
