HEALTH PLUS:Perfectionism can be used to achieve great things but it can also be destructive, writes MARIE MURRAY.
PERFECTIONISM is a gift and an affliction. It is a gift when it is the psychological force for great achievement. It is a gift when it inspires the artist to create what the mind imagines. It is a gift when the composer persists until notes are found to express emotions that are otherwise inexpressible linguistically.
Perfectionism is a gift when the architect pays the attention to detail that makes the building an edifice of beauty, safety, representation and functionality. It is a gift when the medical research is so clinically robust and rigorous that it reveals what was previously unknown, for the benefit of all.
Perfectionism ensures that the poem is crafted to convey an aspect of a life, a significant event, a deep emotion, a universal experience or an ordinary occurrence in people’s lives. It is perfectionism that fashions the garment meticulously, produces the perfect prose, the superlative sculpture and the ideal composition.
Perfectionism has given us some of our most wondrous works of art. But perfectionism has also deprived us of many things that we could have enjoyed but never came to fruition.
This is because they fell so far short of the perfectionist’s aspirations that they were not attempted or, if begun, they were not finished or, if finished, they were not published or displayed. We do not know what ideas, what objects, what concepts, what creations will never enter the public arena because of perfectionists’ fears.
This is when perfectionism is an affliction, a burden to those who suffer from it and to those who surround them because non-completion is the perfectionist’s problem. If it is not good enough, it does not happen at all.
This is the negative aspect of perfectionism: the belief that anything less than perfect is unacceptable: when the perception of perfect so exceeds human capacity that it cannot be attained.
This is when perfectionism enters the realms of pathological precision, fastidiousness, extreme diligence and obsessive attention that sets standards that so exceed human capacity that they cannot be attained.
This is when perfectionism becomes a maladaptive and obsessive quest for the unattainable.
Perfectionists are often accused of pride but it is more often from humility and self-deprecation that perfectionism arises. Intellectually gifted and talented children are enormously demanding of themselves and will destroy their work if it contains an error. In so doing they deprive themselves and others of the joy that their work would give.
The characteristics of pathological perfectionism that cause underachievement in those who are gifted have been identified and includes “fear of failure” so extreme that projects cannot be undertaken for fear of imperfection, a “polarised mindset” so that what is not perfect is regarded as worthless, “procrastination” which postpones beginning a project until all conditions are perfect and “paralysed perfectionism” where a work is never completed because it is never perfect.
Perfectionists may also operate from differing motivations such as those who seek perfection on behalf of others. These are often people of high integrity, ethical sensitivity and compelling idealism. There are perfectionists for whom self-aggrandisement is their motivation.
There are those who expect perfection of themselves, but not of other people, and those who demand perfection of others but not of themselves.
Perfectionists often believe that others expect them to be perfect and indeed, because adaptive perfectionists may have a history of achieving exceptionally high standards, a higher standard is expected of them.
This can heighten the pressure on the perfectionist’s sensitive personality. It can also confirm the perfectionists’ belief that they are worthless unless they are perfect.
Parents know that it is important for them to distinguish between the child and the child’s accomplishments, between inner worth and external success, and to differentiate between encouragement of high standards and teaching their children that the best job is the job that is done, not the job waiting to be done to perfection.
In each of us there is, perhaps, a wish to achieve the unattainable. This has been at the heart of human progress and at the heart of human anxiety and discontent. The balance between pragmatism and perfection is a delicate one that takes time to learn.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and director of the Student Counselling Services in UCD