2021.08.10 完美主义的陷阱

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The perfectionism trap
Society bombards us with instructions to be happier, fitter and richer. Why have we become so dissatisfied with being ordinary?

Aug 10th 2021

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By Josh Cohen

As a young university lecturer two decades ago, I taught a course on 19th-century American literature. Though I loved the period, my students were less enamoured. Most would give up on “Moby-Dick” or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Essays” after only a few pages, then sit in seminars coiled in silence, hoping that I wouldn’t call on them.

Roy was different. He was prodigiously well-read and discussed our texts with passionate intensity, which his classmates observed with a mixture of perplexity and awe. At the end of term, most students handed in efficient and entirely unremarkable essays. But Roy came to my office two days before the deadline begging for an extension.


I explained to him that I couldn’t grant him extra time without a doctor’s note and that he’d lose marks for giving in the work late. I urged him to go home and just write his essay. He had already demonstrated that he had numerous interesting things to say.

Roy said he’d actually already written the piece. Why then, I asked, hadn’t he submitted it? “Because it’s terrible,” he replied, screwing up his face in agony. He implored me for a few more days’ grace; I insisted that it wasn’t in my power.

The essay came in a day late. Despite being docked five points, it still scored a high mark.

Roy continued to hand in work late for the remainder of his degree and nonetheless came top of his year by some distance. The following year he enrolled on a Masters programme I ran. His work became ever more dazzling and the delays in submission more protracted. When he came to see me a week before the deadline for his final dissertation, I spotted an angry rash across his forehead. In some alarm, I asked if he was well.

“It’s fine,” he snapped. “I just rub away at the skin when I’m stressed, that’s all.” I then noticed that his nails were bitten past the quick and his fingers had swollen red pads.

I directed Roy to the student-counselling service. At first he refused to engage with it, but he soon realised that it could support his requests for an extension. The official September deadline passed, but Roy’s counsellor helped him stretch it until the following January.

Changing the dimensions of a nose or bust has come to represent the desired yet unattainable hope of a perfect future

Just before Christmas Roy came to see me, unkempt and staring glassily into the middle distance. There was no chance of getting his dissertation completed in time, he told me. By now I had learned the art of gentle remonstration. This was a Masters dissertation not his life’s work, I pointed out. It didn’t need to be perfect.

“Trust me,” he replied with a mirthless laugh, “it’s a world away from perfection. It’s not even in the same galaxy.” I surmised that he had written it, a fact which he confirmed. “I’ve also read it”, he added, “which gave me no option but to delete it.” Slack-jawed, I asked him if he had kept a copy.


He hadn’t. He’d wiped out more than 20,000 words. “I have way too much respect for you to have subjected you to them,” he told me.

This turned out to be the last time I saw Roy. For the next year and a half, he was granted extension after extension as a result of his ongoing anxiety. When the final extension expired, he submitted neither a dissertation nor an excuse. I wrote to him and asked whether he had a draft to show me. “Not that I’m willing to inflict on you, I’m afraid,” came his reply. I didn’t hear from him again.

Among the texts on the undergrad syllabus I taught to Roy was “The Birth-Mark”, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne written in 1843. It’s the most chilling study I know of the psychology of perfectionism.

Aylmer, a young scholar of science, develops an increasingly febrile obsession with a small red birthmark on the cheek of his beautiful young wife Georgiana. He finds her tantalising proximity to perfect beauty intolerable.

To him the birthmark was a sign of the “fatal flaw of humanity…[a] symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay and death”. Georgiana learns to see herself in the distorted mirror of her husband’s gaze and comes to share his horror of the birthmark. She begs him to use his ingenuity to correct “what Nature left imperfect”.


Installing his wife in a concealed boudoir by his laboratory, Aylmer subjects her to various alchemical concoctions. While she is cloistered away Georgiana reads her husband’s scientific diary, only to discover a litany of disappointments: “Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed.”

Georgiana is unable to bring herself to draw the obvious conclusion: her husband’s morbid obsession with her “fatal flaw” is a displacement of his disillusionment with himself. Instead she deludes herself that his horror at her imperfection is a noble expression of love. Aylmer distils a mysterious potion with the taste of “water from a heavenly fountain”, which Georgiana drinks. The birthmark disappears but no sooner has it done so than Georgiana expires.

This disturbing fantasy of an odd young man in an underground laboratory has since become a real aspiration for men and women all over the world. It’s hard to read Hawthorne’s tale and not think of reports of people dying or being maimed after having plastic surgery in Turkey or the Dominican Republic.

Like the virus itself, perfectionism adapted to the very conditions that had begun to neutralise it

Changing the dimensions of a nose or bust has come to represent the much desired yet unattainable hope of a perfect future. This is just one of the perfectionist fantasies that plague our consumerist lives. Perfect weddings, homes and holiday destinations beam out from advertising hoardings, tv screens and social-media platforms, inciting feelings of envy, inadequacy and longing in billions of viewers.

In my work as a psychoanalyst I frequently encounter people in the grip of some punishing ideal of professional, romantic, physical or moral perfection. Rarely a day passes without at least one patient lamenting or berating themselves for having fallen short of an exacting goal or standard they had set for themselves. The self-laceration is usually amplified by the belief that someone else they know – a colleague, sibling or friend – would, in their place, have mustered the necessary effort or guile to succeed.

As lockdown began last spring, I felt I was beginning to see many of my patients let go of the perfectionist demands they had placed upon themselves. Institutions and businesses adapted to home working, and many people saw a lull in the workload, a break from the constant surveillance and an opportunity to recalibrate their priorities. They embraced simple pleasures – baking, walking, reading, talking – and seemed optimistic about their relationships with their partners and families.

In the religious imagination, the notion of human perfection is blasphemy

I was particularly surprised by the unfamiliar spirit of self-acceptance that accompanied these changes. “I felt a bit gleeful submitting that policy review,” said Polly, one of my patients. “It was pretty ropy.” Having described herself as “pathologically conscientious” the first time we met, she now took pleasure in producing work that was “barely up to scratch”. “Call it payback for the thousands of hours of unpaid overtime I’ve put in over the years.”

The restrictions had opened her mind to all that she was missing: gardening, cycling with her partner, playing board games with her kids. But after about six weeks, I felt this new mood of indulgence wane and the old demands punitively re-emerge.


Like the virus itself, Polly’s perfectionism had adapted to the very conditions that had begun to neutralise it. She had thought that she could elude the surveillance and judgment of her line manager at home; now she was increasingly conscious of being noticed on Slack. She had found a new source of competitiveness in home-working: who could be more productive under these added pressures?

I began to notice some version of this shift in many of my patients: more stringent fitness regimes, more vigilant attention to their children’s home-schooling. They also became increasingly irritable and frustrated with partners, colleagues and, at times, me. “Don’t you ever think self-examination can sometimes get in the way of practical action?” one man asked me. “Don’t you feel it’s sometimes better to stop wallowing and just get on with it?”


This mood was discernible beyond my consulting room, the sense that this slowdown had been a temporary respite but it was time to get serious again. Perfectionism was back, as alluring and unforgiving as before.

The reprieve from perfectionist zeal, followed by its remorseless return, made me think that perfectionism might be a deep-rooted and persistent element of the human condition. After all, the Bible begins with the fall from grace of divinely created beings into sin and mortality.

Some version of this origin story can be found across cultures. From this perspective, religion is an extravagant scheme for the recovery of our lost perfection, at least in its monotheistic variants.

But religion also has a contrary, or perhaps complementary, purpose. For centuries it was the primary means through which we came to terms with being fallen and flawed – imperfect, in short. Religious striving for moral and spiritual improvement goes in tandem with the sombre recognition that perfection belongs to God alone.

When mortals in the Bible or mythology, such as the architects of the Tower of Babel or Prometheus, attempt to usurp divine status, they are duly punished. In the religious imagination, the notion of human perfection is blasphemy.

The bonds of religion loosened with the advent of industrial society. Nietzsche observed that the denizens of a secular modernity, having killed God, were unable to live without him. In his place they invented an array of new gods: Culture, Science, Commerce, the State, the Self.

From Emerson’s provocative defence of “self-reliance” in 1841 to the rise of the self-help industry from the 1930s and the emergence of our own selfie culture, selfhood was regarded as our highest value and the object of our striving. Educational, aesthetic and financial betterment and the need for validation from others are the elements that form the perfectionist air we all now breathe.

Perfectionism “makes for a thin life, lived for what it isn’t rather than what it is”

The imperative towards perfection remains as potent and pervasive as ever. In an article in 2017 two British psychologists, Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, ascribed an exponential rise in perfectionism among the younger generation to the “increasingly demanding social and economic parameters” within which they struggled to make their lives. They also blamed “increasingly anxious and controlling parental practices”.

Over-crowded labour markets, particularly for desirable professional and creative jobs, as well as unaffordable housing, are driving young people and their parents to ever greater lengths to secure a competitive advantage. So begins another unpaid internship, further training or some other side-hustle.

By linking the spread of perfectionist anxiety to the atmosphere of precarity and competition conjured by the free market, these psychologists anticipated a critique of meritocracy by Michael Sandel, an American philosopher. In “The Tyranny of Merit”, published in 2020, Sandel argues that meritocratic capitalism created a permanent state of competition within society, which corrodes solidarity and the notion of the “common good”. This system sustains an order of winners and losers, breeding “hubris and self-congratulation” among the former and chronically low self-worth among the latter.

In such a culture, young people are likely to grow dissatisfied both with what they have and who they are. Social media creates additional pressure to construct a perfect public image, exacerbating our feelings of inadequacy.

In the absence of intrinsic feelings of worth, a perfectionist tends to measure her own value against external measures: academic record, athletic prowess, popularity, professional achievement. When she falls short of expectations, she feels shame and humiliation.

This weight of society’s expectations is hardly a new phenomenon but it has become particularly draining over recent decades, perhaps because expectations themselves are so multifarious and contradictory. The perfectionism of the 1950s was rooted in the norms of mass culture and captured in famous advertising images of the ideal white American family that now seem self-satirising.

In that era, perfectionism meant seamlessly conforming to values, behaviour and appearance: chiselled confidence for men, demure graciousness for women. The perfectionist was under pressure to look like everyone else, only more so. The perfectionists of today, by contrast, feel an obligation to stand out through their idiosyncratic style and wit if they are to gain a foothold in the attention economy.


Perfectionism is not solely a malign force, however. The demand for perfection may be stifling, but a perfectionist can also feel that his achievements are the only thing holding him together. When we’re overwhelmed by life and chastise ourselves for our inadequacies, a stellar test score or a thousand Instagram likes can deliver the fleeting sensation that everything is under control.

That sensation quickly fades, of course, and requires constant refreshing. As Moya Sarner, a writer steeped in psychoanalytic ideas, put it to me: “It makes for a thin life, lived for what it isn’t rather than what it is. If you’re forever trying to make your life what you want it to be, you’re not really living the life you have.”


In 1990 Randy Frost, an American psychologist, developed 35 questions designed to measure perfectionism. His “multidimensional perfectionism scale” distinguished between three broad types of perfectionism.

The first type is self-oriented perfectionism, a persecuting refrain which insists that you should do better. It breeds a highly motivating, but ultimately exhausting, obligation to become an idealised version of yourself: happier, fitter, richer (comparative adjectives are often found on the covers of self-help books).

In my consulting room, this often takes the form of patients berating themselves for eating an almond croissant or binge-watching police procedurals instead of working on a presentation or checking over a child’s history essay.

The second type is socially prescribed perfectionism, which leaves us trying to live up to the expectations of others. This often expresses itself in fantasies of criticism, as an internal monologue tells us how we should be and what we should do. We hear snide deprecations of our insufficiently gracious manners, ugly clothes or dull conversation.

Third comes other-oriented perfectionism, which turns that persecutory voice outwards as we demand that those around us also live up to our impossible ideals. This is most noxious when wielded as an instrument of power: the parent who asks his child why she got only nine A-grades, or the boss who can’t see why his employee can’t just power through the flu. Other-oriented perfectionism is almost always projection, finding failure and disappointment in others that we can’t bear to see in ourselves, in the flimsy guise of authoritative criticism.

It has a chameleonic ability to adapt itself to different character types and vulnerabilities

These are interesting notions, yet as soon as we encounter actual people it’s hard to distinguish between these categories. The imperative to be thinner or smarter is often fed by a chorus of internal and external voices. It’s easy to see how feelings of self-criticism might be channelled into criticism of others.

Perfectionism is slippery. Clinically it is reflected in a dizzying range of symptoms: depression and anxiety, obsessional disorders, narcissism of the “thin-skinned” type (when a projected grandiosity conceals intense fragility), psychosomatic illness, suicidal thoughts, body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Perfectionism has a chameleonic ability to adapt itself to different character types and vulnerabilities, which is perhaps why it has never been categorised as a discrete mental disorder.

This also means that perfectionism can grow from the soil of very different childhood experiences. Curran and Hill are correct to note that “helicopter parents” – those who oppressively supervise their children’s academic and extracurricular activities – have contributed to an increase in perfectionism. But my own experience has shown me that very different styles of parenting can have similar outcomes.

The hands-off parent who keeps a more respectful distance from their child’s life can induce a deep longing in the child for the kind of recognition he believes can be won only through the never-ending accumulation of achievements. The child who feels she can’t win, that her best efforts at rugby or chess or cheerleading will only draw her parent’s niggling criticism, will also be afflicted by a permanent itch to do better.

Yet the child whose parent assures him that every doodle or gold star is a landmark achievement may also come to feel himself under constant pressure to live up to the achievements of his early years. Whichever way you approach parenting, you may end up stoking your children’s desperate need to please and create a lifelong difficulty in distinguishing their own desires from your aspirations for them.

This may sound like the formula for blaming the parents that many people view as the essence of psychoanalysis. But you could also regard it as a humane acknowledgment of how hard it is to get parenting right. The sweet spot between over-involvement and under-involvement in our children’s lives is maddeningly elusive.


The difficulty of escaping the snares of perfectionism suggests that it has a place deep in the structure of the human psyche. However we are brought up we internalise an ideal of the person we aspire to be.

Psychoanalysts refer to this as the ego ideal, an image of the perfect self which, as infants, we saw reflected back to us in the adoring gaze of our parents or carers. But at that point in our life we also acquire a superego, the internalised voice of a harshly critical parent, which is typically amplified much later by other adults in positions of authority such as teachers or bosses. Both the personae inhabiting our psyche can feel accusatory. Perfectionism grows out of self-love and self-abasement.

Some psychologists argue that perfectionism doesn’t need to be pathological. In 1978 D.E. Hamachek, an American psychologist, drew a distinction between normal and neurotic perfectionism. The normal perfectionist can set high standards for themselves without descending into punitive self-criticism. They can even take pleasure in striving for improvement.

Subsequent researchers have questioned Hamachek’s distinction, arguing that the desire to be perfect can never be “normal”. The yearning for something that is intrinsically impossible can result only in feelings of frustration and inadequacy. My own work with perfectionists has led me to reach a similar conclusion. Yet though perfectionism can corrode our sense of self-worth, few of us would want to give up the ambition to develop and grow.

How might we protect this aspiration from the incursions of perfectionist zeal? There are no easy answers. Something about being human makes it difficult to feel that we have done, or are, enough. We are unwilling to extinguish the hope that, one day, we will be recognised as exceptional: the perfect being that our parents once placed on a pedestal.

Serge Leclaire, a French psychoanalyst, posited the intriguing idea that life sets us the task of metaphorically killing this wonderful child. We must continually renounce the fantasy of an ideal self and grieve its impossibility.

This idea always brings to mind one of my first patients, a woman in her 20s whose mother had recently died of a terminal illness. Her parents had divorced when she was a toddler; her father remarried and lived abroad with a second family. Lydia was tormented by her own image, posting selfies obsessively and tracking the number of likes, while forensically examining her skin, teeth and figure for flaws.

Whichever way you parent, you may end up stoking your children’s desperate need to please

As she’d grown up, her mother had devoted herself to a successful business career, outsourcing child care to successive au pairs. Lydia couldn’t get her mother to take an interest in her everyday struggles with schoolwork, friendships and boys. The only way she could reliably claim her attention was through fashion and grooming – makeovers, manicures and clothes shopping online. She would recall her mother looking lovingly at her as she applied mascara or brushed her hair, and telling her how lovely she was, how lucky any man would be to have her one day.

“And then I’d try to talk to her about a problem with a teacher or a friend and I’d see the interest almost literally drain from her face, as though it was all too much to take on.” Lydia coped by becoming robustly self-reliant. But when her mother died, she found herself taken over by the quest for physical perfection.

I suggested to Lydia that she felt compelled to turn into the lovable child she had seen reflected in her mother’s gaze when they jointly focused on applying makeup. This suggestion triggered an outpouring of long repressed anger and frustration. “If I’d screamed at her when she was alive, she’d barely have registered it,” she said, weeping bitterly. “And now she’ll never hear me at all.”


Lydia’s rage was a form of delayed grief, not just for the mother she had lost but for the perfect child she fleetingly felt herself to be when she managed to hold her mother’s attention. Mourning that child enabled her to wean herself off the obsessive self-scrutiny.

Soon after she stopped posting selfies, Lydia came to see me one day with a smile on her face. “As I was leaving for the session I caught myself in the mirror”, she said, “and I thought, oh, I’m actually fairly attractive!” She was now laughing heartily. “But funnily enough, I’m no supermodel. And even more surprisingly, I’ve no wish to be one.”

Perfectionism may appear to spur us on to adult successes. But in truth it is a fundamentally childish attitude. It imbues us with the conviction that life in effect ends when we give up hope of becoming the best version of ourselves. On the contrary, as Lydia discovered, that is the moment at which life can finally begin.■

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst and professor of modern literary theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. His books include “The Private Life”, “Not Working” and “How to Live. What to Do”

ILLUSTRATIONS: ADAM SIMPSON



完美主义的陷阱
社会对我们进行轰炸，要求我们更快乐、更健康和更富有。为什么我们变得如此不满足于平凡？

2021年8月10日


作者：乔什-科恩

二十年前，作为一名年轻的大学讲师，我教授了一门关于19世纪美国文学的课程。虽然我喜欢这个时期，但我的学生却不太喜欢。大多数人只读了几页就放弃了《白鲸》或拉尔夫-瓦尔多-爱默生的《散文》，然后在研讨会上沉默地坐着，希望我不要叫他们。

罗伊则不同。他博览群书，对我们的课文进行了热烈的讨论，他的同学们以一种困惑和敬畏的心情观察着他。在学期结束时，大多数学生都提交了高效且完全不引人注目的论文。但罗伊在截止日期前两天来到我的办公室，恳求延期。


我向他解释说，没有医生证明，我不能给他额外的时间，而且他迟交作业会被扣分。我劝他回家去写论文。他已经证明了他有许多有趣的东西可以说。

罗伊说他实际上已经写好了这篇文章。我问，那他为什么还不提交呢？"因为它很糟糕，"他回答说，痛苦地皱起了脸。他恳求我再宽限几天；我坚持说这不是我的能力范围。

作文晚了一天才交上来。尽管被扣了5分，但还是得了高分。

罗伊在余下的学位课程中继续晚交作业，但还是以一定的距离获得了全年级第一。第二年，他报名参加了我开办的硕士课程。他的工作变得越来越令人眼花缭乱，提交的时间也越来越长。当他在最后一篇论文的截止日期前一周来找我时，我发现他的额头上出现了愤怒的皮疹。我有些惊慌，问他是否安好。

他说："很好，"他说。"我只是在压力大的时候擦掉了皮肤，仅此而已。" 然后我注意到他的指甲被咬破了，他的手指有肿胀的红色垫子。

我把罗伊带到了学生咨询处。起初，他拒绝与之接触，但他很快意识到，它可以支持他的延期请求。9月的正式期限已过，但罗伊的辅导员帮助他将期限延长到下一年的1月。

改变鼻子或胸围的尺寸已经代表了对完美未来的渴望但却无法实现的希望。

就在圣诞节前，罗伊来找我，他蓬头垢面，玻璃般地盯着中间的距离。他告诉我，他的论文已经没有机会及时完成了。到现在为止，我已经学会了温柔地劝说的艺术。我指出，这只是一篇硕士论文，而不是他的毕生心血。它不需要完美。

"相信我，"他笑着回答，"它离完美有天壤之别。它甚至不在同一个星系里。" 我猜测是他写的，他证实了这一事实。他补充说："我也读过它"，"这让我别无选择，只能删除它"。我瞠目结舌，问他是否保留了一份副本。


他没有。他删掉了两万多字。"他告诉我："我非常尊重你，不会让你受到这些东西的影响。

这变成了我最后一次见到罗伊。在接下来的一年半里，由于他持续的焦虑，他被批准了一次又一次的延期。当最后一次延期过期时，他既没有提交论文，也没有提交借口。我写信给他，问他是否有草稿给我看。他回答说："恐怕我不愿意给你看"。我没有再听到他的消息。

在我教给罗伊的本科教学大纲中，有一篇《生死记》，是纳撒尼尔-霍桑写于1843年的短篇小说。这是我所知道的关于完美主义心理学的最令人心寒的研究。

艾尔默，一位年轻的科学学者，对他年轻漂亮的妻子乔治安娜脸颊上的一个小红胎记产生了越来越热的迷恋。他发现她那诱人的接近完美的美是无法容忍的。

对他来说，胎记是 "人性的致命缺陷......[一个]象征着他的妻子对罪恶、悲伤、腐烂和死亡的责任"。乔治安娜学会了从她丈夫扭曲的目光中看到自己，并与他一样对胎记感到恐惧。她恳求他用他的聪明才智来纠正 "大自然留下的不完美"。


艾尔默将他的妻子安置在实验室旁的一个隐蔽的闺房里，让她接受各种炼金术的调理。当她被关起来的时候，乔治安娜阅读了她丈夫的科学日记，却发现了一连串的失望。"尽管他取得了很多成就，但她不能不说，如果与他所追求的理想相比，他最辉煌的成功几乎总是失败的。

乔治亚娜无法使自己得出明显的结论：她丈夫对她的 "致命缺陷 "的病态迷恋是他对自己的幻灭的一种转移。相反，她自欺欺人地认为他对她的不完美的惊恐是一种高尚的爱的表达。艾尔默提炼出一种神秘的药水，有 "天泉之水 "的味道，乔治亚娜喝下了它。胎记消失了，但不等它消失，乔治亚娜就死了。

这个在地下实验室里的古怪年轻人的令人不安的幻想，后来成为全世界男人和女人的真正愿望。阅读霍桑的故事，很难不想到在土耳其或多米尼加共和国做完整形手术后死亡或致残的报道。

就像病毒本身一样，完美主义适应了那些已经开始中和它的条件。

改变鼻子或胸围的尺寸已经代表了人们对完美未来的渴望，但却无法实现的希望。这只是困扰我们消费主义生活的完美主义幻想之一。完美的婚礼、住宅和度假胜地从广告围栏、电视屏幕和社交媒体平台上发射出来，激起了数十亿观众的羡慕、不满足和渴望之情。

在我作为一个心理分析师的工作中，我经常遇到人们被一些惩罚性的职业、浪漫、身体或道德的完美理想所控制。很少有一天没有至少一个病人因为没有达到他们为自己设定的严格的目标或标准而哀叹或责骂自己。这种自我责备通常被一种信念所放大，那就是他们认识的其他人--同事、兄弟姐妹或朋友--会在他们的位置上做出必要的努力或狡猾来取得成功。

随着去年春天封锁的开始，我觉得我开始看到我的许多病人放下了他们对自己的完美主义要求。机构和企业适应了在家工作，许多人看到了工作量的冷清，从持续的监视中解脱出来，并有机会重新调整他们的优先事项。他们接受了简单的乐趣--烘烤、散步、阅读、交谈--并且对他们与伴侣和家庭的关系似乎很乐观。

在宗教的想象中，人类完美的概念是一种亵渎。

我对伴随这些变化的陌生的自我接受精神感到特别惊讶。"我觉得提交那份政策审查有点幸灾乐祸，"我的病人之一波莉说。"这是很烂的"。在我们第一次见面时，她形容自己是 "病态的认真"，而现在她对完成 "勉强合格 "的工作感到高兴。"这是对我多年来无偿加班的数千小时的回报"。

这些限制使她打开了心扉，看到了她所缺少的一切：园艺、与她的伙伴骑自行车、与她的孩子玩棋盘游戏。但大约六周后，我感到这种新的放纵情绪在减弱，旧的要求惩罚性地重新出现。


就像病毒本身一样，波莉的完美主义已经适应了那些已经开始中和它的条件。她曾以为自己可以躲过家里部门经理的监视和评判；现在她越来越意识到自己在Slack上被关注。她在家庭工作中发现了一个新的竞争来源：在这些额外的压力下，谁能更有效率？

我开始在我的许多病人身上注意到这种转变的一些版本：更严格的健身计划，更警惕地关注他们孩子的家庭教育。他们也变得越来越易怒，对合作伙伴、同事，有时也对我感到沮丧。"你不觉得自我检查有时会妨碍实际行动吗？"一位男士问我。"你不觉得有时停止沉湎于此并继续工作会更好吗？"


这种情绪在我的咨询室之外也能看出来，感觉到这种放缓是暂时的喘息，但现在又到了严肃的时候。完美主义又回来了，和以前一样诱人，一样不留情面。

从完美主义的狂热中缓过来，然后又无情地回来，使我想到，完美主义可能是人类状况中根深蒂固和持续存在的一个因素。毕竟，《圣经》以神圣创造的生命从恩典中堕落到罪恶和死亡开始。

这个起源故事的某些版本在各种文化中都可以找到。从这个角度来看，宗教是一个恢复我们失去的完美的奢侈计划，至少在其一神论的变体中是如此。

但宗教也有一个相反的，或许是互补的目的。几个世纪以来，它是我们接受堕落和缺陷--简而言之，不完美的主要手段。宗教对道德和精神改善的努力与对完美只属于上帝的沉痛认识相辅相成。

当圣经或神话中的凡人，如巴别塔的建筑师或普罗米修斯，试图篡夺神的地位时，他们会受到应有的惩罚。在宗教的想象中，人类完美的概念是亵渎神灵的行为。

随着工业社会的到来，宗教的束缚也松动了。尼采观察到，世俗现代性的居民在杀死了上帝之后，没有他就无法生存。取而代之的是，他们发明了一系列的新神。文化、科学、商业、国家、自我。

从1841年爱默生对 "自力更生 "的挑衅性辩护，到1930年代自助产业的兴起和我们自己的自拍文化的出现，自性被视为我们的最高价值和我们努力的对象。教育、审美和经济上的改善以及对他人验证的需求，是构成我们现在都在呼吸的完美主义空气的元素。

完美主义 "使生活变得单薄，因为它不是什么，而不是它是什么"。

对完美的要求仍然像以前一样强大和普遍。在2017年的一篇文章中，两位英国心理学家托马斯-库兰和安德鲁-希尔将年轻一代中完美主义的指数级上升归因于 "日益苛刻的社会和经济参数"，他们在这些参数中努力创造自己的生活。他们还指责 "父母的做法越来越焦虑和控制"。

过度拥挤的劳动力市场，特别是理想的专业和创造性工作，以及难以负担的住房，正在迫使年轻人和他们的父母花更大的代价来确保竞争优势。因此，另一个无偿实习、进一步培训或其他一些副业开始了。

通过将完美主义焦虑的蔓延与自由市场带来的不稳定和竞争氛围联系起来，这些心理学家预见了美国哲学家迈克尔-桑德尔对功利主义的批判。在2020年出版的《功利的暴政》中，桑德尔认为，功利资本主义在社会中创造了一种永久的竞争状态，它腐蚀了团结和 "共同利益 "的概念。这个系统维持着赢家和输家的秩序，在前者中滋生出 "傲慢和自我满足"，而在后者中则是长期的低自我价值。

在这样的文化中，年轻人很可能对他们所拥有的东西和他们是谁都感到不满意。社交媒体创造了额外的压力来构建一个完美的公众形象，加剧了我们的不足感。

在缺乏内在价值感的情况下，完美主义者倾向于用外部标准来衡量自己的价值：学习成绩、运动能力、知名度、职业成就。当她达不到期望时，她会感到羞愧和耻辱。

这种社会期望的重量几乎不是一个新的现象，但近几十年来，它变得特别耗费精力，也许是因为期望本身是如此多变和矛盾。20世纪50年代的完美主义植根于大众文化的规范中，并体现在著名的美国白人理想家庭的广告形象中，现在看来是自我嘲讽。

在那个时代，完美主义意味着完美地符合价值观、行为和外表：男性的自信，女性的端庄和蔼。完美主义者面临着与其他人一样的压力，只是更多的压力。相比之下，今天的完美主义者感到有义务通过他们独特的风格和智慧脱颖而出，如果他们要在注意力经济中获得立足点的话。


然而，完美主义并不仅仅是一种恶性力量。对完美的要求可能是令人窒息的，但一个完美主义者也可能觉得他的成就是唯一支撑他的东西。当我们被生活压得喘不过气来，为自己的不足之处而自责时，一个出色的考试成绩或Instagram上的一千个赞可以带来短暂的感觉，即一切都在掌控之中。

当然，这种感觉很快就会消失，需要不断刷新。正如深受精神分析思想影响的作家莫亚-萨纳对我说的那样。"它使生活变得单薄，为它不是什么而不是它是什么而活。如果你永远试图使你的生活成为你想要的样子，你就没有真正过上你所拥有的生活。"


1990年，美国心理学家兰迪-弗罗斯特开发了35个问题，旨在测量完美主义。他的 "多维完美主义量表 "区分了三种广泛的完美主义类型。

第一种类型是自我导向的完美主义，一种坚持你应该做得更好的迫害性反驳。它滋生了一种高度激励但最终令人疲惫的义务，即成为一个理想化的自己：更快乐、更健康、更富有（比较性的形容词经常出现在自助书籍的封面上）。

在我的咨询室里，这常常表现为病人责备自己吃了一个杏仁羊角面包，或者狂看警匪片，而不是去做演讲或检查孩子的历史论文。

第二种类型是社会规定的完美主义，它使我们试图达到他人的期望。这往往表现为对批评的幻想，因为内部独白告诉我们应该如何做，应该做什么。我们听到对我们不够亲切的礼仪、丑陋的衣服或沉闷的谈话的冷嘲热讽。

第三是面向他人的完美主义，它将这种迫害性的声音转向外部，因为我们要求我们周围的人也达到我们不可能实现的理想。这在作为权力的工具时最为有害：父母问他的孩子为什么只得到9个A的成绩，或者老板不明白为什么他的雇员不能仅仅通过流感的力量。面向他人的完美主义几乎总是投射，在别人身上找到我们不忍心看到的失败和失望，打着权威批评的虚伪幌子。

它有一种变色龙的能力，可以使自己适应不同的性格类型和弱点。

这些都是有趣的概念，然而只要我们遇到实际的人，就很难区分这些类别。要更瘦或更聪明的要求往往是由内部和外部的声音合唱出来的。我们很容易看到自我批评的感觉如何被引导到对他人的批评。

完美主义是滑稽的。在临床上，它反映在一系列令人眼花缭乱的症状中：抑郁症和焦虑症、强迫症、"脸皮薄 "式的自恋（当投射出的豪情掩盖了强烈的脆弱）、心身疾病、自杀念头、身体变形症和饮食失调。完美主义有一种变色龙的能力，能够适应不同的性格类型和脆弱性，这也许就是为什么它从未被归类为一种独立的精神障碍。

这也意味着，完美主义可以从非常不同的童年经历的土壤中生长。库伦和希尔正确地指出，"直升机父母"--那些对孩子的学业和课外活动进行压迫性监督的父母--导致了完美主义的增加。但我自己的经验告诉我，非常不同的养育方式可以产生类似的结果。

袖手旁观的父母，如果与孩子的生活保持比较恭敬的距离，会诱发孩子对那种他认为只有通过永无止境的成就积累才能赢得的认可的深深渴望。如果孩子觉得自己赢不了，她在橄榄球、国际象棋或拉拉队中的最大努力只会招致父母喋喋不休的批评，那么她也会被一种永久的瘙痒所折磨，想要做得更好。

然而，如果孩子的父母向他保证，每一个涂鸦或金星都是一个里程碑式的成就，那么他也可能会感到自己不断受到压力，要达到他早年的成就。无论你以何种方式养育孩子，你最终都可能激起孩子急于取悦的需求，并在区分他们自己的愿望和你对他们的期望方面造成终生困难。

这听起来可能是指责父母的公式，许多人认为这是精神分析的本质。但是你也可以把它看作是一种人性化的承认，即要做好父母的工作是多么困难。在我们孩子的生活中，过度参与和参与不足之间的甜蜜点是令人疯狂地难以捉摸的。


摆脱完美主义陷阱的难度表明，它在人类心理结构的深处有一个位置。无论我们是如何长大的，我们都会将我们渴望成为的人的理想内在化。

精神分析学家将此称为自我理想，这是一个完美的自我形象，在婴儿时期，我们在父母或照顾者的崇拜目光中看到了这个形象的反影。但在我们生命的那一刻，我们也获得了一个超我，即父母严厉批评的内在声音，这通常会在很久之后被其他处于权威地位的成年人如教师或老板放大。栖息在我们心灵中的这两个角色都会感到指责。完美主义是从自爱和自卑中生长出来的。

一些心理学家认为，完美主义不需要是病态的。1978年，美国心理学家D.E. Hamachek区分了正常和神经质的完美主义。正常的完美主义者可以为自己设定高标准，而不会陷入惩罚性的自我批评。他们甚至可以在努力改进的过程中获得快乐。

后来的研究人员对哈马切克的区分提出质疑，认为对完美的渴望永远不可能是 "正常 "的。对本质上不可能的东西的渴望只能导致沮丧和不充分的感觉。我自己对完美主义者的工作也使我得出了类似的结论。然而，尽管完美主义会腐蚀我们的自我价值感，我们中很少有人愿意放弃发展和成长的雄心。

我们如何才能保护这一愿望不受完美主义狂热的侵袭？没有简单的答案。作为人类，有些东西让人很难感觉到我们已经做得足够好，或者说是足够好。我们不愿意熄灭这样的希望，即有一天，我们会被公认为杰出的人：我们的父母曾经把我们放在一个基座上的完美的人。

法国精神分析学家塞尔日-勒克莱尔（Serge Leclaire）提出了一个耐人寻味的想法，即生活给我们设定的任务是隐喻地杀死这个美好的孩子。我们必须不断地放弃对理想自我的幻想，并为它的不可能感到悲伤。

这个想法总是让我想起我的一个第一批病人，一个20多岁的女人，她的母亲最近死于绝症。她的父母在她蹒跚学步的时候就已经离婚了；她的父亲再婚，与第二个家庭一起生活在国外。莉迪亚被自己的形象所折磨，她痴迷地发布自拍，跟踪喜欢的数量，同时对自己的皮肤、牙齿和身材进行取证，寻找缺陷。

无论你以何种方式为人父母，你最终都可能激起你的孩子对取悦的迫切需求。

随着她的成长，她的母亲致力于成功的商业事业，将儿童护理工作外包给连续的互惠生。莉迪亚无法让她的母亲对她在学校作业、友谊和男孩方面的日常挣扎感兴趣。她唯一能可靠地要求母亲注意的方式是通过时尚和修饰--化妆、修甲和网上购物的衣服。她会想起她的母亲在她涂睫毛膏或梳头时慈爱地看着她，并告诉她她是多么可爱，任何男人有一天能拥有她都是多么幸运。

"然后我试图和她谈谈老师或朋友的问题，我看到她的兴趣几乎从她的脸上消失了，好像这一切都太难接受了。" 莉迪亚通过变得强大的自力更生来应对。但是当她的母亲去世后，她发现自己被对身体完美的追求所占据。

我向莉迪亚建议，当他们共同专注于化妆时，她觉得自己必须变成她母亲目光中所反映的那个可爱的孩子。这个建议引发了长期压抑的愤怒和挫折感的喷发。"如果她活着的时候我对她大喊大叫，她几乎不会注意到。"她说，痛苦地哭泣着。"而现在，她根本不会听到我的声音。


莉迪亚的愤怒是一种延迟的悲痛，不仅是为她失去的母亲，也是为她设法吸引母亲注意力时，她短暂地觉得自己是个完美的孩子。对这个孩子的哀悼使她能够从强迫性的自我审查中解脱出来。

在她停止发布自拍后不久，有一天莉迪亚带着微笑来见我。她说："当我要去参加会议时，我看到镜子里的自己，"她说，"我想，哦，我实际上是相当有吸引力的！" 她现在笑得很开心。"但有趣的是，我不是超级模特。更令人惊讶的是，我并不希望成为超级模特。

完美主义可能看起来会刺激我们取得成人的成功。但事实上，它从根本上说是一种幼稚的态度。它使我们坚信，当我们放弃成为最好的自己的希望时，生活实际上就结束了。相反，正如莉迪亚发现的那样，那是生命最终可以开始的时刻。

乔什-科恩是一位精神分析学家，也是伦敦大学金史密斯学院现代文学理论教授。他的书包括《私人生活》、《不工作》和《如何生活。做什么"

插图。亚当-辛普森