Archive for: October 2008

There are lots of reasons why people feel like intellectual frauds. Psychologists look primarily to the expectations and messages you received as a child. For example, having parents who expected perfection or over-emphasis on results vs. effort, a notable lack …

Every day intelligent, competent people drop out of school, take jobs far below their true abilities and aspirations, and allow long-held creative or entrepreneurial dreams to wither all in an attempt to avoid detection. These are of course the extreme …

Most of the people who study the impostor syndrome come out of the field of psychology and therefore tend to trace its origins to either the family/childhood message or to various psychological characteristics like being introverted, pessimistic, Type A personality …