7 ms·

The Mysterious Return of Imposter Syndrome

28 points by anarbadalov 4y ago

kloch 4y ago
This article must have been written by someone who has never experienced it.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > written by someone who has never experienced it I didn't feel it was a dismissive account.. Plenty of useful writing on psychology/psychoanalysis is written by practitioners who don't themselves experience symptoms they study and research. However, trained psychotherapists are likely to be more sensitive than clinical psychologists because they must first go through intensive therapy themselves. It seems an incredibly complex phenomenon. Just below the surface I sense there is a very delicate and potentially explosive force of feelings of the same depth as race and gender issues. I don't think anyone should be dismissive of it. That said, I am not sure "imposter syndrome" is the most helpful term, or that there's a single phenomenon at play, or exactly what's normative or pathological. After all it's hardly debatable that we live in a "fake society" of "fake news" and "fake leaders" running things. As Marcuse and Fromm both said in different ways, such feelings would be a sane reaction to an insane world. Maybe people with "imposter syndrome" are taking ownership of a societal projection and are the only ones around smart enough to know we're all kidding ourselves :)
cs137 4y ago
Although I think "impostor syndrome" is vague and over-diagnosed, it's a natural reaction to a diseased society such as ours. Capitalism tells you you can be anything you want to be, if you're good enough. Of course, most people are never going to get anything good--the decent opportunities were mostly allocated before we were born. Watching this, the naive conclusion is that only the very best are going to get anything, and that everyone else just sucks. (And, if 99.9% of people who try to do something suck at it, it's just reasonable to assume a high probability that you also suck. Priors. Self-perception does not typically have enough resolution to conclude otherwise.) The other possibility is that society is deeply and thoroughly corrupt, but to voice it makes a person sound bitter... and bitterness, at least in the US, is extremely socially unacceptable, especially when one is right. If it were a college, it would look like this. Person: Hi, Labor Market University Dean. I'd like to major in writing. Labor Market: No can do. We've got too many writers. Person: I suppose I'll major in... machine learning sounds fun. Labor Market: No slots left. All taken. Person: What about business leadership? Labor Market: Hahaha, no. Person: Well, I have to do something. What've ya got? Labor Market: It looks like we've got room for you to major in... subordinate bullshit, subordinate bullshit, and... subordinate bullshit. Of course, to speak of impostor syndrome usually implies that the person actually is competent (not an impostor). And so, it tends to be most prominent in people who (a) are quite good at what they're doing, and (b) have beaten the odds to achieve some recognition and success. The problem, at that point, is that you start to see so many charlatans who get just as much in the way of rewards as you do. What this establishes is that worldly success, rare as it is in anything worth doing, is not indicative of skill or talent, at least not in any field where there is even an iota of subjectivity (athletics are a different story). There's too much corruption and there's too much noise. As humans, it comes naturally to find patterns when they aren't actually there. If we fail, it's too easy to accept society's narrative that we deserved failure and aren't really fit to be more than a business subordinate. If we succeed, we see both (a) the failure of people as good as, or better than, we are, as well as (b) undeserved success of incompetents even at the highest levels. The first case is one of perceiving a spurious pattern; the second is a case of watching the pattern break down and concluding that external indicators of one's competence carry almost no signal, thus falling back into an I-know-nothing state... which tends to make a person feel incompetent... because how good can you be if you don't even know whether you're good[1]? ---- [1] In reality, there is at most a weak correlation between one's competence and precise confidence thereabout; however, if we make certain assumptions of rationality that sometimes hold and sometimes fail, we are led to expect that they would correlate.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > you you can be anything you want to be, if you're good enough. Of course, most people are never going to get anything good I mentioned this devastating mismatch between promises and realistic opportunities in a comment yesterday. It's baked into the education system now, which has become something of a racket for selling broken dreams. > And, if 99.9% of people who try to do something suck at it, it's just reasonable to assume a high probability that you also suck. I pause to ever mention Jordan Peterson here (because usually that leads to massive down-votes), but anyway, he has a major blind-spot in assuming dominance hierarchies are congruent with competence hierarchies. People who laud meritocracies often forget this. > worldly success, rare as it is in anything worth doing, is not indicative of skill or talent "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong...." Getting over this is an important part of growing up, and I think some people don't quite get that. > The other possibility is that society is deeply and thoroughly corrupt What I think happened is that our shared "noble lies" became embarrassing sordid tales of uncle Bob screwing the pooch. After your prime minister has fucked a pig's face it's almost impossible to recover and re-orientate. Is there still an institution that hasn't been utterly razed by scandal? > because how good can you be if you don't even know whether you're good? Without objective measures and exposure to genuine competence you can respect and aspire to there is no yardstick. The demise of recognisable institutions took this away. > bitterness, at least in the US, is extremely socially unacceptable, especially when one is right. That's a bit weird. A WASP thing? British culture allows more for a general sourness around class resentments. We know our leaders are over-privileged incompetents and make light of it openly. But not to the extent of utter nihilistic cynicism as Russians. I want to say that US Americans don't have the quiescent injustice of class hanging over everything... but I am not sure that's true. You just deal with it differently across the pond.
_8j50 4y ago
I feel like an impostor because I don't write blog posts, I am terrible at public speaking and haven't done anything noteworthy in my field that is recognized. I do think unless you are well recognized by others there is some truth to the imposter syndrome. It may just be your subconscious knowing you could do better.
- denkmoon 4y ago
  You do realise it's absurd right? Why would you be an 'impostor' because you don't write blogs? Less than 1% of (programmers|mathematicians|physicists|etc) write blogs. Less 1% of people do public speaking, even less do it well. Less than 1% of people in any given field do noteworthy things that are recognised. I don't mean to pick on you or anything. I think you've written down what a lot of people feel, but it's kind of crazy to expect that of yourself. It's OK to just be OK.
  - _8j50 4y ago
    I get what you are saying but it comes down to the relationship you have with yourself. I don't care about others opinions, in my own opinion I can't accept myself as just OK, even really good is not acceptable. "I was barely good enough at work and sucked at everything else" is not a good way to remember one's life in the end. To each his own, the imporant piece in my opinion is to not judge others by your own measuring stick or live your life trying to measure up to others to get their acceptance or approval. Every runner practices and runs to win the race. Every fighter also fights to win a championship. I realize a job isn't any of those but when you realize that ultimately a runner and a fighter both run and fight against themsleves, to be the best they can be and nothing more then maybe that is something we can all relate with.
    - wingerlang 4y ago
      > Every runner practices and runs to win the race. Every fighter also fights to win a championship. This is definitely not true.
    - denkmoon 4y ago
aaron695 4y ago
verdagon 4y ago
I think impostor syndrome naturally emerges from the way we usually interact with those around us. Everyone puts their best face forward, emphasizes their strengths, and downplays their weaknesses. In fact, it's often a requirement for promotion. I think the cure to impostor syndrome is to talk to those around us who we trust. By talking to others, we can much better see the full range of their skills, and hear an outside opinion on the full range of our skills. The difference is usually not as large as we thought. I'd love to hear others techniques for combating it too!
arconis987 4y ago
Is it just me, or is the language in the essay strangely hard to parse? > But insofar as it is the passing on of second-hand knowledge about being, it is itself a form of imposture that reproduces and impersonates without meaning or sense and therefore enacts imposture in the act of naming itself as well as in the manner that it imitates an act of passing on knowledge of an existing disease or syndrome. The essay doesn’t actually have a lot to say, but that fact is hidden by convoluted language. Maybe the author is trying to give the reader impostor syndrome?
- WhitneyLand 4y ago
  It’s not just you it’s pompous bs.
- wisty 4y ago
  It's being clever for the sake of being clever. They're saying imposter syndrome is itself a bit of an imposter, because it's often more a meme than a serious disease (whatever that means, it's not in DSM I think, maybe it's a symptom of some kind of anxiety).
- Silica6149 4y ago
  Reading blogs online, sometimes I don't know if it's the writer's superfluous style that makes it hard for me to understand, or if it was just written with AI.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    E-flux is a very well established art and cultural theory publication. Still, I agree with you. However, as someone who came from that world into computer science, I find the simplistic salesman-like superficiality that is common on many Hacker News tech posts even more off-putting than the wordy mumbo jumbo in E-flux. I think the question is who they’re trying to impress. If you can sort that out, it will be easier to parse and filter.
    - labrador 4y ago
WhitneyLand 4y ago
Serious subject, terrible article. It’s randomly pontificates in an accusatory tone. ”Both the university and workplace assist in the naming and propagation of imposter syndrome as a desired and necessary result…” So our schools and workplaces make imposter syndrome worse by identifying it and offering help. Plenty more wild-ass speculation in the piece.
oxff 4y ago
It is just a way to humble brag if you are a narcissist; and in the case you aren't, you probably are incompetent and need to fix it.
Twisell 4y ago
I think the author miss some points about the global social context. Working in tech (but i guess it could apply to any corporate job) one of the reason I feel like an imposter is the significant salary gap between my job and other very technical and essentials job like : nurses, teachers, farmer, etc... Yes my job is maybe useful in some way but nothing I do seem so special that it justifies such a salary difference with people than actually enable us to exist as a society. You'd think Covid would have change thing a little, but back to normal with covid we are...
- webspaceadam 4y ago
  I agree. Sometimes i wonder when i go out of my daily work and meet with people outside of the tech bubble. And yeah. They are struggeling
ribs 4y ago
I thought this article was going somewhere interesting, but then it just sort of petered out, after a number of paragraphs of increasingly dismaying academic language. Not that academic language doesn’t have a purpose sometimes. I just didn’t see it here. Maybe it’s my bad (to use a very non-academic phrasing).
- Silica6149 4y ago
  Academic writing can be so confusing sometimes. It feels like the authors are writing to sound knowledgeable instead of trying to convey ideas clearly to the reader.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anovikov 4y ago
The article is impossible to finish or digest, and i think it may be just a joke, something written in obfuscated language with little actual meaning so that readers think they are fools. As for impostor syndrome, maybe it's not actually a psychological phenomenon at all. Maybe it's real and vast majority of people doing something are indeed impostors. We are living in the era of fakery and incompetence and being a well-paid professional or a business owner doesn't mean someone is not an absolute fake. And maybe these people are just feeling it with their guts. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be corrected by therapy. Simply because believing you are not a fake makes you a much better, more convincing fake.
robocat 4y ago
Looks quite dense to me. Contains cursed triggers: Imposter syndrome is unintentionally spread via the attempts to contain it, similar to the case of trigger warnings, where anticipating the potentially traumatic effect of some material by issuing a trigger warning can itself be a trigger, triggered by the simple phrase “trigger.” We are paralyzed by an endless series of words and phrases that seek to depotentiate the trauma only to further the trauma, a progression that bears resemblance to the flashbacks and traumatic dreams that caused Freud to question the sovereignty of the pleasure principle. One is interpellated as an imposter––a diagnosis whose history is lost or repressed––that comes to be the opposite of what it was, that comes from nowhere and can never be resolved. The diagnosis is therefore a name, a description, and a curse. To speak it is to try to rid oneself of its effects, to pass it on to another who might neutralize it, stop it in its tracks. Edit: interpellated: http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/notesoninterpellation.htm http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/notesoninterpellation....

28 points by anarbadalov 4y ago

kloch 4y ago

This article must have been written by someone who has never experienced it.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> written by someone who has never experienced it I didn't feel it was a dismissive account.. Plenty of useful writing on psychology/psychoanalysis is written by practitioners who don't themselves experience symptoms they study and research. However, trained psychotherapists are likely to be more sensitive than clinical psychologists because they must first go through intensive therapy themselves. It seems an incredibly complex phenomenon. Just below the surface I sense there is a very delicate and potentially explosive force of feelings of the same depth as race and gender issues. I don't think anyone should be dismissive of it. That said, I am not sure "imposter syndrome" is the most helpful term, or that there's a single phenomenon at play, or exactly what's normative or pathological. After all it's hardly debatable that we live in a "fake society" of "fake news" and "fake leaders" running things. As Marcuse and Fromm both said in different ways, such feelings would be a sane reaction to an insane world. Maybe people with "imposter syndrome" are taking ownership of a societal projection and are the only ones around smart enough to know we're all kidding ourselves :)

cs137 4y ago

Although I think "impostor syndrome" is vague and over-diagnosed, it's a natural reaction to a diseased society such as ours. Capitalism tells you you can be anything you want to be, if you're good enough. Of course, most people are never going to get anything good--the decent opportunities were mostly allocated before we were born. Watching this, the naive conclusion is that only the very best are going to get anything, and that everyone else just sucks. (And, if 99.9% of people who try to do something suck at it, it's just reasonable to assume a high probability that you also suck. Priors. Self-perception does not typically have enough resolution to conclude otherwise.) The other possibility is that society is deeply and thoroughly corrupt, but to voice it makes a person sound bitter... and bitterness, at least in the US, is extremely socially unacceptable, especially when one is right. If it were a college, it would look like this. Person: Hi, Labor Market University Dean. I'd like to major in writing. Labor Market: No can do. We've got too many writers. Person: I suppose I'll major in... machine learning sounds fun. Labor Market: No slots left. All taken. Person: What about business leadership? Labor Market: Hahaha, no. Person: Well, I have to do something. What've ya got? Labor Market: It looks like we've got room for you to major in... subordinate bullshit, subordinate bullshit, and... subordinate bullshit. Of course, to speak of impostor syndrome usually implies that the person actually is competent (not an impostor). And so, it tends to be most prominent in people who (a) are quite good at what they're doing, and (b) have beaten the odds to achieve some recognition and success. The problem, at that point, is that you start to see so many charlatans who get just as much in the way of rewards as you do. What this establishes is that worldly success, rare as it is in anything worth doing, is not indicative of skill or talent, at least not in any field where there is even an iota of subjectivity (athletics are a different story). There's too much corruption and there's too much noise. As humans, it comes naturally to find patterns when they aren't actually there. If we fail, it's too easy to accept society's narrative that we deserved failure and aren't really fit to be more than a business subordinate. If we succeed, we see both (a) the failure of people as good as, or better than, we are, as well as (b) undeserved success of incompetents even at the highest levels. The first case is one of perceiving a spurious pattern; the second is a case of watching the pattern break down and concluding that external indicators of one's competence carry almost no signal, thus falling back into an I-know-nothing state... which tends to make a person feel incompetent... because how good can you be if you don't even know whether you're good[1]? ---- [1] In reality, there is at most a weak correlation between one's competence and precise confidence thereabout; however, if we make certain assumptions of rationality that sometimes hold and sometimes fail, we are led to expect that they would correlate.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> you you can be anything you want to be, if you're good enough. Of course, most people are never going to get anything good I mentioned this devastating mismatch between promises and realistic opportunities in a comment yesterday. It's baked into the education system now, which has become something of a racket for selling broken dreams. > And, if 99.9% of people who try to do something suck at it, it's just reasonable to assume a high probability that you also suck. I pause to ever mention Jordan Peterson here (because usually that leads to massive down-votes), but anyway, he has a major blind-spot in assuming dominance hierarchies are congruent with competence hierarchies. People who laud meritocracies often forget this. > worldly success, rare as it is in anything worth doing, is not indicative of skill or talent "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong...." Getting over this is an important part of growing up, and I think some people don't quite get that. > The other possibility is that society is deeply and thoroughly corrupt What I think happened is that our shared "noble lies" became embarrassing sordid tales of uncle Bob screwing the pooch. After your prime minister has fucked a pig's face it's almost impossible to recover and re-orientate. Is there still an institution that hasn't been utterly razed by scandal? > because how good can you be if you don't even know whether you're good? Without objective measures and exposure to genuine competence you can respect and aspire to there is no yardstick. The demise of recognisable institutions took this away. > bitterness, at least in the US, is extremely socially unacceptable, especially when one is right. That's a bit weird. A WASP thing? British culture allows more for a general sourness around class resentments. We know our leaders are over-privileged incompetents and make light of it openly. But not to the extent of utter nihilistic cynicism as Russians. I want to say that US Americans don't have the quiescent injustice of class hanging over everything... but I am not sure that's true. You just deal with it differently across the pond.

_8j50 4y ago

I feel like an impostor because I don't write blog posts, I am terrible at public speaking and haven't done anything noteworthy in my field that is recognized. I do think unless you are well recognized by others there is some truth to the imposter syndrome. It may just be your subconscious knowing you could do better.

denkmoon 4y ago
You do realise it's absurd right? Why would you be an 'impostor' because you don't write blogs? Less than 1% of (programmers|mathematicians|physicists|etc) write blogs. Less 1% of people do public speaking, even less do it well. Less than 1% of people in any given field do noteworthy things that are recognised. I don't mean to pick on you or anything. I think you've written down what a lot of people feel, but it's kind of crazy to expect that of yourself. It's OK to just be OK.
- _8j50 4y ago
  I get what you are saying but it comes down to the relationship you have with yourself. I don't care about others opinions, in my own opinion I can't accept myself as just OK, even really good is not acceptable. "I was barely good enough at work and sucked at everything else" is not a good way to remember one's life in the end. To each his own, the imporant piece in my opinion is to not judge others by your own measuring stick or live your life trying to measure up to others to get their acceptance or approval. Every runner practices and runs to win the race. Every fighter also fights to win a championship. I realize a job isn't any of those but when you realize that ultimately a runner and a fighter both run and fight against themsleves, to be the best they can be and nothing more then maybe that is something we can all relate with.
  - wingerlang 4y ago
    > Every runner practices and runs to win the race. Every fighter also fights to win a championship. This is definitely not true.
  - denkmoon 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago

verdagon 4y ago

I think impostor syndrome naturally emerges from the way we usually interact with those around us. Everyone puts their best face forward, emphasizes their strengths, and downplays their weaknesses. In fact, it's often a requirement for promotion. I think the cure to impostor syndrome is to talk to those around us who we trust. By talking to others, we can much better see the full range of their skills, and hear an outside opinion on the full range of our skills. The difference is usually not as large as we thought. I'd love to hear others techniques for combating it too!

arconis987 4y ago

Is it just me, or is the language in the essay strangely hard to parse? > But insofar as it is the passing on of second-hand knowledge about being, it is itself a form of imposture that reproduces and impersonates without meaning or sense and therefore enacts imposture in the act of naming itself as well as in the manner that it imitates an act of passing on knowledge of an existing disease or syndrome. The essay doesn’t actually have a lot to say, but that fact is hidden by convoluted language. Maybe the author is trying to give the reader impostor syndrome?

WhitneyLand 4y ago
It’s not just you it’s pompous bs.
wisty 4y ago
It's being clever for the sake of being clever. They're saying imposter syndrome is itself a bit of an imposter, because it's often more a meme than a serious disease (whatever that means, it's not in DSM I think, maybe it's a symptom of some kind of anxiety).
Silica6149 4y ago
Reading blogs online, sometimes I don't know if it's the writer's superfluous style that makes it hard for me to understand, or if it was just written with AI.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  E-flux is a very well established art and cultural theory publication. Still, I agree with you. However, as someone who came from that world into computer science, I find the simplistic salesman-like superficiality that is common on many Hacker News tech posts even more off-putting than the wordy mumbo jumbo in E-flux. I think the question is who they’re trying to impress. If you can sort that out, it will be easier to parse and filter.
  - labrador 4y ago

WhitneyLand 4y ago

Serious subject, terrible article. It’s randomly pontificates in an accusatory tone. ”Both the university and workplace assist in the naming and propagation of imposter syndrome as a desired and necessary result…” So our schools and workplaces make imposter syndrome worse by identifying it and offering help. Plenty more wild-ass speculation in the piece.

oxff 4y ago

It is just a way to humble brag if you are a narcissist; and in the case you aren't, you probably are incompetent and need to fix it.

Twisell 4y ago

I think the author miss some points about the global social context. Working in tech (but i guess it could apply to any corporate job) one of the reason I feel like an imposter is the significant salary gap between my job and other very technical and essentials job like : nurses, teachers, farmer, etc... Yes my job is maybe useful in some way but nothing I do seem so special that it justifies such a salary difference with people than actually enable us to exist as a society. You'd think Covid would have change thing a little, but back to normal with covid we are...

webspaceadam 4y ago
I agree. Sometimes i wonder when i go out of my daily work and meet with people outside of the tech bubble. And yeah. They are struggeling

ribs 4y ago

I thought this article was going somewhere interesting, but then it just sort of petered out, after a number of paragraphs of increasingly dismaying academic language. Not that academic language doesn’t have a purpose sometimes. I just didn’t see it here. Maybe it’s my bad (to use a very non-academic phrasing).

Silica6149 4y ago
Academic writing can be so confusing sometimes. It feels like the authors are writing to sound knowledgeable instead of trying to convey ideas clearly to the reader.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

anovikov 4y ago

The article is impossible to finish or digest, and i think it may be just a joke, something written in obfuscated language with little actual meaning so that readers think they are fools. As for impostor syndrome, maybe it's not actually a psychological phenomenon at all. Maybe it's real and vast majority of people doing something are indeed impostors. We are living in the era of fakery and incompetence and being a well-paid professional or a business owner doesn't mean someone is not an absolute fake. And maybe these people are just feeling it with their guts. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be corrected by therapy. Simply because believing you are not a fake makes you a much better, more convincing fake.

robocat 4y ago

Looks quite dense to me. Contains cursed triggers: Imposter syndrome is unintentionally spread via the attempts to contain it, similar to the case of trigger warnings, where anticipating the potentially traumatic effect of some material by issuing a trigger warning can itself be a trigger, triggered by the simple phrase “trigger.” We are paralyzed by an endless series of words and phrases that seek to depotentiate the trauma only to further the trauma, a progression that bears resemblance to the flashbacks and traumatic dreams that caused Freud to question the sovereignty of the pleasure principle. One is interpellated as an imposter––a diagnosis whose history is lost or repressed––that comes to be the opposite of what it was, that comes from nowhere and can never be resolved. The diagnosis is therefore a name, a description, and a curse. To speak it is to try to rid oneself of its effects, to pass it on to another who might neutralize it, stop it in its tracks. Edit: interpellated: http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/notesoninterpellation.htm http://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/notesoninterpellation....