Nowadays athletes in order to achieve high results and achievements should donate their own interests and private life because of spending much more time for countless flights, acclimatization, everyday workout and competition. So they are short of time to fully replenish their psychological and physiological resources, resulting in accumulation of negative human functional states. Without application of any external psychological interventions there is a high probability of occurrence and development of occupational deteriorations in athletes. The main objective of this theoretical research was to identify and analyze the specificity of occupational deteriorations which can develop in sport as a career. In the presented research paper we described the major occupational deteriorations such as burnout (Maslach et al, 2008), workaholism (Schaufeli et al., 2008), perfectionism (Xolmogorova, 2010), type A behaviour (Ryska et al., 1999) and procrastination (Milgram et al., 2000). 

Accumulation of negative human functional states can entail one or even more occupational deteriorations that will play important role in career termination from sport. Workaholism, burnout, perfectionism, type A Behaviour and procrastination has their own specific manifestations, which can also appear in postretirement from sport activity. The most popular approaches to occupational deteriorations, operationalization and specific features of their appearance and particular manifestations are emphasized, and also various consequences in athlete’s life are described. Thus, occupational deteriorations are one of the most topical and pressed forward issues, which need further development in the framework of conceptualization and inventory development in modern psychology.

The paper provides an overview of work engagement and workaholism, and also the current research. Work engagement differs from workaholism as a psychological phenomenon, but both concepts are closely connected with each other. The scientific research of the phenomena mentioned above began only in 1970, when Oates published his first book called “On being a “workaholic”. Each employee has to find balance between private life and work to get utmost job satisfaction, and to perform his/her job responsibilities productively. Work engaged staff have higher levels of subjective comfort and psychological well-being, without any experience of occupational deteriorations. In modern psychology, there is no prescription for perfect recipe of finding balance between work and family that entails different angles of considering work engagement and workaholism, their causes and prevention mechanisms. On the other hand, the impact of excessive work engagement may be one of the reasons of developing negative human functional states that plays a moderating role in the transit stage from work engagement to workaholism. Schaufeli discribed work engagement as a positive, affective-motivational state of fulfillment that can be characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Workaholism is a multidimensional construct, which can be linked to both positive and negative outcomes. At the contemporary stage of scientific development a lot of difficulties in studying workaholism and work engagement could be analyzed, e.g. there are no adopted Russian diagnostics instruments to assess workaholism and its manifastations. Thus, further research should be devoted to the issues of choosing proper research instruments in order to obtain clear and reliable results.

The paper examines the phenomenon of “professional deformation” which comprises destructive personality changes that occur after many years of a career. This condition does not only produce an adverse effect on the personal productivity, but also gives rise to undesirable qualities in a person, alters his/her professional behaviour. Professional deformation may lead to changes in mental structure and personality traits (behaviour, ways of communication, stereotypes, perceptions, character, values, etc.). They are also one of the reasons that may prevent the professional development of a person.

Various concepts of the structure of professional deformation are considered. Thus, E.F. Zeer classifies professional deformation based on four levels of their manifestations, A.K. Markov considers professional deformation based on major trends, A. Pines, J. Aronson and A. Shirom understand professional deformation as a one-dimensional structure, D.V. Direndonk, W.B. Schaufeli, H.J Sixma, accounts professional deformation as a two-dimensional structure, while B. Pelman, E. Hartman, C. Maslach, S. Jackson and B.A. Farber identified three constructs of professional deformation, and G.H. Frith, A. Mims, E.F. Iwanicki, R.L. Schwab represent professional deformation as four-factor model, where in addition to emotional exhaustion and reduced professional achievements they considered depersonalization associated with work, and depersonalization associated with the recipients.

In conclusion, the domestic and foreign psychology are given lack of consensus on the structure of this condition.