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This paragraph, which seems to summarize much of this article’s position, seems quite dangerous: > Perfectionism is a personality trait rather than a mental he

This paragraph, which seems to summarize much of this article’s position, seems quite dangerous: > Perfectionism is a personality trait rather than a mental health condition. There is no World Health Organization diagnosis code for perfectionism and it is not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It can fly under the radar and masquerade as the pursuit of high standards, yet it overlaps with a plethora of disorders from eating to obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, body dysmorphia, depression and suicide. Note how it simultaneously says “perfectionism is not a mental health condition”, then proceeds to immediately insuinate it is effectively a mental disorder. This continues throughout the rest of the article. The domain of neurodiversity as a whole is far more complex than reducing the whole of a phenomenon to such simplistic and IMO damagingly derogatory terms as “interolerable rise of perfectionism”. Despite the author’s attempt to interleave a few studies with personal stories, it conveniently neglects to tell the stories of “happy perfectionism”: There are many like myself, for whom pursuing this internal motivation for perfectionism turns out to be immensely intrinsically rewarding. In fact, I believe this intrinsic pleasure some (small percentage of the population) take from striving for perfection to have played (and continues to play) a pivotal role in humanity’s rise in technological advancement. It is not the destination, but the journey (to asymptotically approach a vision of perfection), that healthy perfectionists find so rewarding. Certainly, pathological corruptions of perfectionism exist (for example, any such case where you experience distress or suffering for not achieving infinite perfection, despite it being obviously unattainable) — but this is true for all personality traits.

deleted 8y ago
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s-shellfish 8y ago
Everything is a mental health condition these days. Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds. It's easy for the field to operate on the premise 'but these poor people, we are trying to help them!'. It's at the least, a bit absurd to be hypercritical over every little detail of thinking, acting, behaving, processing, etc and consider that 'help'. I agree with you that perfectionism doesn't have to be a bad thing. It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. Which can be a totally reasonable reaction, life sometimes sucks and happens and things one wants to be devoted to may have to be deprioritized. But if you want to be a perfectionist and are in a place in life where you can afford to devote yourself that much, then you shouldn't let the fact that other people made different choices get to you to the point that it halts your own ability to progress.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  >Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds Swap 'rich' in for 'nervous'.
- jerf 8y ago
  One thing that helps is to remember is that by the standards of the industry, you do not have a condition unless it is materially adversely affecting your life. The mental health industry is not concerned about whether you are a perfectionist; they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism. This is obviously a subset of people who have perfectionist tendencies. Another topical example is "internet addiction"; they're not pathologizing "being on the internet a lot", they're pathologizing "being on the internet so much it materially adversely affects your life". I know plenty of people in 2018 who are on the Internet in one form or another "a lot", but at the moment don't know anybody for whom it is materially adversely affecting their life. But I knew someone circa 1997 in college for whom that would be true. (Arguably at one point I came close, but I never quite crossed the threshold of playing Quake II online to the exclusion of the things I needed to do. I perhaps did not do them as well as I should have, but I did them well enough.) Of course there's a lot of give in that boundary, and there are people who cross it. But at least conceptually, the proliferation of pathologies is less bad than it looks. Nominally they're not creating new ones, but merely recognizing more ways in which you can be materially negatively impacted that already existed.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    > they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism Sometimes you have to go through the hard stuff to get things to be perfect. Mental health care can sit there and explain every cliche aphorism while you wait to get to that point, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything useful for some individuals. It could just be a waste of time, resources, energy, and distract from focus - especially if you have a problem solving mind you value and accidentally wind up syncing into 'the problems of mental health care' while going through the process of re-correcting maladaptive perfectionism. It has to be taken a possibility that for some people, mental health care itself can have an adverse effect on the mind. If a person isn't getting that validation in their life, it's very easy to jump to other types of problems, like psychological ones. This can give a sense of progress but is ultimately unfilling. Anything can be made to be seen as a problem and anything can be made to be seen as a solution when mental health care is so generalized to the point that literally anything you do can be connected or related in some way to everything you do. That doesn't mean a directional rule of causality can be inferred. The obvious is that anything you do is related directly through the fact that your own existence defines the relation between what you did and what you do. There is that obvious connection. But just because some stuff you do yields results and other stuff does not, doesn't mean there exists an intrinsic rule one can rely upon eternally as though it were gospel. Perfectionism becomes maladaptive when individuals are not willing to be adapative. The mental health care industry is not precluded from this very normal, very characteristic trait of being human. Nothing granted it that authority absolutely and nothing ever will. The industry is made of people just as capable of being flawed as the ones they identify as ill. It doesn't mean they understand all perspectives of being human.
RoutinePlayer 8y ago
Are you guilty of expecting a perfect popular science newspaper article that's merely pointing out what appears to be a recent general trend? :-)
dkarl 8y ago
I agree, I don't like these kinds of articles at all. They observe that something has a bad impact on the lives of a small minority of people, and instead of digging into the factors that make it harmful for those people, they cast a negative pall over the whole thing. You see the same thing with dieting and anorexia. Or, like with your case (happy perfectionism) there are bodybuilders who are extremely strict about their diets and find it to be an immensely fulfilling hobby that provides them a lot of pride and is a springboard for applying discipline in other areas of their life, but other people look at them and assume they are driven by obsession and self-loathing.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I think the author hit on it somewhat in the article, but from personal experience (yes, I know, an anecdote) the dangerous part of perfectionism is when it slides into a crippling fear of failure. In fact, I think actually calling it this, a fear of failure, vs. calling it "perfectionism" is actually a lot more constructive because it makes it easier for people to agree on the problem. I think most people would agree that having a willingness to try and perhaps fail is a good thing, and a deep fear of this failure is unhealthy and unproductive. Contrast that with "perfectionism", which many people (you) argue is more about the striving to succeed and do better, and most people I think would agree that is a good thing.
danielam 8y ago
"Certainly, pathological corruptions of perfectionism exist" I submit that that is exactly what perfectionism is which is, for all intents and purposes, a variation of scrupulosity. What you may be describing is something like a desire for high standards or a general love of growth.
Noos 8y ago
If it's the journey, it's not perfectionism. Perfectionism is all about results; a person wants the results in their life to be perfect according to the means they define it as, which requires control. The moment you realize you cannot control things and can only enjoy the ride, you are no longer perfectionist. You're negate the actual thing and are calling it perfectionism when it's not, because perfectionism always has the elements of results and control, two things this "healthy" perfectionism cannot have. Please don't define what you have as what it is. There are too many odd people who define what they are as on the spectrum and talk of bullshit like neurodiversity when people legitimately suffer and have serious negative consequences in their lives from it. Perfectionism ruins lives and warps relationships with people precisely because its not about striving while realizing you can't ultimately have it. That's just what normal people do, try and do the best they can while realizing a lot is out of their hands.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

s-shellfish 8y ago

Everything is a mental health condition these days. Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds. It's easy for the field to operate on the premise 'but these poor people, we are trying to help them!'. It's at the least, a bit absurd to be hypercritical over every little detail of thinking, acting, behaving, processing, etc and consider that 'help'. I agree with you that perfectionism doesn't have to be a bad thing. It seems more that one has to be cautious with who one displays those characteristics towards because it can easily provocate insecurity in others, unintentionally. Which can be a totally reasonable reaction, life sometimes sucks and happens and things one wants to be devoted to may have to be deprioritized. But if you want to be a perfectionist and are in a place in life where you can afford to devote yourself that much, then you shouldn't let the fact that other people made different choices get to you to the point that it halts your own ability to progress.

creaghpatr 8y ago
>Honestly I think the mental health care industry is getting nervous over how complex, diverse and non-trivial it is to understand minds Swap 'rich' in for 'nervous'.
jerf 8y ago
One thing that helps is to remember is that by the standards of the industry, you do not have a condition unless it is materially adversely affecting your life. The mental health industry is not concerned about whether you are a perfectionist; they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism. This is obviously a subset of people who have perfectionist tendencies. Another topical example is "internet addiction"; they're not pathologizing "being on the internet a lot", they're pathologizing "being on the internet so much it materially adversely affects your life". I know plenty of people in 2018 who are on the Internet in one form or another "a lot", but at the moment don't know anybody for whom it is materially adversely affecting their life. But I knew someone circa 1997 in college for whom that would be true. (Arguably at one point I came close, but I never quite crossed the threshold of playing Quake II online to the exclusion of the things I needed to do. I perhaps did not do them as well as I should have, but I did them well enough.) Of course there's a lot of give in that boundary, and there are people who cross it. But at least conceptually, the proliferation of pathologies is less bad than it looks. Nominally they're not creating new ones, but merely recognizing more ways in which you can be materially negatively impacted that already existed.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > they are concerned about whether you are having a material negative impact on your life because of your perfectionism Sometimes you have to go through the hard stuff to get things to be perfect. Mental health care can sit there and explain every cliche aphorism while you wait to get to that point, but that doesn't mean it's doing anything useful for some individuals. It could just be a waste of time, resources, energy, and distract from focus - especially if you have a problem solving mind you value and accidentally wind up syncing into 'the problems of mental health care' while going through the process of re-correcting maladaptive perfectionism. It has to be taken a possibility that for some people, mental health care itself can have an adverse effect on the mind. If a person isn't getting that validation in their life, it's very easy to jump to other types of problems, like psychological ones. This can give a sense of progress but is ultimately unfilling. Anything can be made to be seen as a problem and anything can be made to be seen as a solution when mental health care is so generalized to the point that literally anything you do can be connected or related in some way to everything you do. That doesn't mean a directional rule of causality can be inferred. The obvious is that anything you do is related directly through the fact that your own existence defines the relation between what you did and what you do. There is that obvious connection. But just because some stuff you do yields results and other stuff does not, doesn't mean there exists an intrinsic rule one can rely upon eternally as though it were gospel. Perfectionism becomes maladaptive when individuals are not willing to be adapative. The mental health care industry is not precluded from this very normal, very characteristic trait of being human. Nothing granted it that authority absolutely and nothing ever will. The industry is made of people just as capable of being flawed as the ones they identify as ill. It doesn't mean they understand all perspectives of being human.

RoutinePlayer 8y ago

Are you guilty of expecting a perfect popular science newspaper article that's merely pointing out what appears to be a recent general trend? :-)

dkarl 8y ago

I agree, I don't like these kinds of articles at all. They observe that something has a bad impact on the lives of a small minority of people, and instead of digging into the factors that make it harmful for those people, they cast a negative pall over the whole thing. You see the same thing with dieting and anorexia. Or, like with your case (happy perfectionism) there are bodybuilders who are extremely strict about their diets and find it to be an immensely fulfilling hobby that provides them a lot of pride and is a springboard for applying discipline in other areas of their life, but other people look at them and assume they are driven by obsession and self-loathing.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

I think the author hit on it somewhat in the article, but from personal experience (yes, I know, an anecdote) the dangerous part of perfectionism is when it slides into a crippling fear of failure. In fact, I think actually calling it this, a fear of failure, vs. calling it "perfectionism" is actually a lot more constructive because it makes it easier for people to agree on the problem. I think most people would agree that having a willingness to try and perhaps fail is a good thing, and a deep fear of this failure is unhealthy and unproductive. Contrast that with "perfectionism", which many people (you) argue is more about the striving to succeed and do better, and most people I think would agree that is a good thing.

danielam 8y ago

"Certainly, pathological corruptions of perfectionism exist" I submit that that is exactly what perfectionism is which is, for all intents and purposes, a variation of scrupulosity. What you may be describing is something like a desire for high standards or a general love of growth.

Noos 8y ago

If it's the journey, it's not perfectionism. Perfectionism is all about results; a person wants the results in their life to be perfect according to the means they define it as, which requires control. The moment you realize you cannot control things and can only enjoy the ride, you are no longer perfectionist. You're negate the actual thing and are calling it perfectionism when it's not, because perfectionism always has the elements of results and control, two things this "healthy" perfectionism cannot have. Please don't define what you have as what it is. There are too many odd people who define what they are as on the spectrum and talk of bullshit like neurodiversity when people legitimately suffer and have serious negative consequences in their lives from it. Perfectionism ruins lives and warps relationships with people precisely because its not about striving while realizing you can't ultimately have it. That's just what normal people do, try and do the best they can while realizing a lot is out of their hands.