| | | The Impostor Syndrome: Finding a Name for the Feelings |
I'll never forget the day I first learned about the Impostor Syndrome. It was 1983. A chronic procrastinator, I was in my fourth year of a doctoral program. Like a lot of graduate students, my status was what was commonly referred to as "A-B-D," meaning I'd completed "all but the dissertation."
I was sitting in class one day when another student rose to present the findings of a study conducted by psychology professor Pauline Clance and psychologist Suzanne Imes called The Impostor Phenomenon Among High Achieving Women (1978).
In a nutshell, Clance and Imes found that many of their female clients seemed unable to internalize their accomplishments. External proof of intelligence and ability in the form of academic excellence, degrees, recognition, promotions and the like was routinely dismissed. Instead, success was attributed to contacts, luck, timing, perseverance, personality or otherwise having "fooled" others into thinking they were smarter and more capable than these women "knew" themselves to be.
Rather than offering assurance, each new achievement and subsequent challenge only served to intensify the ever-present fear of being...
Found Out
"Oh my God," I thought, "I've been unmasked!"
Clearly flustered, I quickly scanned the room checking to see if anyone had caught me nodding in dismayed recognition. No one had. At least not the female students. They were too busy bobbing their own heads in like-minded unison.
It's hard to describe what it was like to discover that these vague feelings of self-doubt, angst and intellectual fraudulence had a name. This, along with the realization that I was not alone, was utterly liberating. This experience proved to be a profound turning point in my life, both academically and personally.
Up until then, my preferred dissertation avoidance technique was to bounce from one potential research topic to another (a self-protection mechanism, I'd come to learn, that is typical of we "impostors"). Not any more. I decided that very day that I would learn everything I could about the Impostor Syndrome and all the ways that women undermine themselves in achievement realms.
Fast forward to 1985. With my dissertation finally complete, I set out to share what I'd found with fellow "impostors" all over the country.
Little did I know then just how many of us there are.
| | | The Impostor Syndrome: Finding a Name for the Feelings |