The label of imposter syndrome is a heavy load to bear…
— from “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome” by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey in the Harvard Business Review, February 2021.
Back in 1978, a couple of psychologists — Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes — were studying “high-achieving women” and developed a concept they termed ‘imposter phenomenon’. Their research involved interviews with about 150 ‘successful’ women.
(You can read their 8-page study here. Not recommended for the faint of heart.)
Ms. Clance and Ms. Imes — who, we note, are themselves women, and thus possibly imposters — postulated that “despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, women who experience the imposter phenomenon persist in believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.” Their numerous interviews with superficially important women — movie stars, corporate leaders, prominent scholars — began with an hypothesis that most successful men ascribe their accomplishments to their own innate brilliance, creativity, hard work, resourcefulness and general savoir-faire, while most successful women suspect they were just “lucky” and don’t deserve to be in the positions they are in — that their success is basically fraudulent, that they’re undeserving of accolades, and worst of all, that they will eventually be ‘found out’ to be imposters.
Later on, the term ‘imposter phenomenon’ was replaced by the term ‘imposter syndrome’, and we can understand why. A ‘phenomenon’ can be something really cool, while a ‘syndrome’ is always a bad thing. It’s not entirely clear whether it was a woman or a man who changed ‘phenomenon’ to ‘syndrome’. But if it was a woman, she probably doesn’t feel proud of what she did.
Be that as it may, I want to formally register my objection to the idea that only successful women suffer from imposter syndrome, because I know at least one man who feels like a fraud. Me.
And I’m not even successful.
Every time I sit down to write a humor article for the Pagosa Daily Post, I have to deal with the irrefutable knowledge that, if anyone finds my essay the slightest bit funny, it was purely by accident, and that I’ve fooled them into thinking I’m a humorist.
Why I would persist in my fraudulent efforts, even my therapist cannot explain. (She’s a very talented psychologist, so she’s probably also suffering from imposter syndrome.) Lord knows, I have been sufficiently warned. How many times did my ex-wife Darlene say to me, “Are you trying to be funny?” or “You probably think that’s real funny…” or, even more plainly, “Louis, you’re not funny.”
Come to think of it, my mother and father used to say pretty much the same things to me. “You’re about as funny as a crutch, Louis.”
Or they would tell me not to be smart. “Don’t you get smart with me, Louis,” my dad used to say, sitting in his big maroon-colored easy chair. Then he’d rattle the newspaper, to emphasize his displeasure.
I still jump whenever I hear a newspaper rattled.
That’s one thing I’m grateful for — that the Daily Post is not a print publication. You can’t rattle a computer. Or if you do, your computer is probably broken.
Not that I am trying to blame Darlene or my parents for my imposter syndrome. They were simply pointing out an obvious fact: that I’m a fraud and will always be a fraud, but also, that I will never be successful enough, or female enough, to be interviewed by two women psychologists for an 8-page study of low self-esteem.
(I would certainly prefer to have ‘imposter phenomenon’ but I realize I don’t deserve that particular label. So I’m stuck with a syndrome.)
But while we are talking about self-esteem, I’ve come across a dozen online articles that all share the same purported quote from a name some Daily Post readers might recognize: Albert Einstein.
“…[T]he exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”
I also feel compelled to think of Albert Einstein as an involuntary swindler. If Albert can think it, so can I. Not that the two of us are all that similar, because Albert thought in German and I think in English. (I don’t even know the German word for “swindler.”)
The point being that even a swindler and a con man can become famous. Heck, you probably could even get elected President.