Imposter Syndrome, first described by two psychologists in 1978, is getting a lot of attention in social media, often by coaches, psychologists or psychiatrists advertising their expertise in helping a person get over it.
Imposter Syndrome (aka imposter phenomenon): Suffering from feelings of intellectual and/or professional fraudulence; the generally false perception of self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments, particularly by otherwise high-functioning persons.
[imposter: assumption of a false identity; pretending to be someone else; ultimately from Latin imponere, to put in or upon, impose, deceive.]
Connections with Psychiatry
Comorbidity: The simultaneous presence of two or more conditions in a patient.
Discussions of imposter syndrome often involve the observation that it co-occurs (has comorbidity) with so-called psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, or other mood or personality disorders named in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the fraudulent psychiatric billing bible used for insurance reimbursement. Poor or low self-esteem is a popular one, expressed in the DSM as “Developmental coordination disorder”.
It should be no surprise that imposter syndrome is being researched in various ethnic minority groups, which we know are already being targeted by psychiatry for harmful mental health services. African Americans receiving mental health services are disproportionately assessed with disruptive, defiant and psychotic disorders, evidence of the systemic racism that psychiatric and psychological associations admit is ingrained in mental health practices.
Imposter syndrome itself is not separately diagnosed as a mental disorder, but it can be the subject of psychiatric treatment when observed as present with another psychiatric diagnosis.
As with other DSM diagnoses, there is no clinical test for it, and of course no known medical etiology; its presence remains an opinion based on observations of various criteria, although there is no generally accepted set of such criteria. There is particular psychiatric interest in this phenomenon since getting it voted into the DSM opens up a new class of potential patients and potential income from its treatment.
Recommended treatments include counseling, particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT); psychotherapy; and psychiatric drugs for comorbid behavioral conditions.
CBT is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.
The Etiology (The Actual Causes of a Condition)
As a result of psychiatric and psychological intervention in schools, harmful behaviorist programs such as “values clarification,” “outcome based education,” “mastery learning,” “self-esteem” classes, and psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs now decimate our schools. For more than 40 years these programs have been a destructive failure, in effect escalating the very problems that psychiatrists claim they prevent or resolve. Could this be one of the precursors of the current spate of imposter syndromes?
Instead of directing children toward genuine achievement and the demonstration of competence they can be proud of, the psychiatric “self-esteem” concept is to tell the child he has accomplished something whether he has or not. Sounds like this could indeed be the etiology of imposter syndrome that psychiatry has not been able to find.
The only thing that causes self-esteem is confidence and production. Confidence is intimately related to competence; and competence is based upon observation, study and practice. Thus we have the lead-in to an actual effective treatment for imposter syndrome.
The Bottom Line
Knowing all this now, are you going with the psychiatric promotion of imposter syndrome, which will likely lead to harmful psychotropic drugs; or are you going with real competence and confidence to bolster self-esteem, which you can do yourself with observation, study and practice?