Imposter syndrome describes that persistent doubt which leads competent women to put their achievements down to luck rather than merit. First described in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, the pattern takes hold through a precise chain of behaviours.
What is imposter syndrome, and where does the idea come from?
You have every right to recognise your own work.
Imposter syndrome, also known as the imposter phenomenon or the imposture experience, describes a persistent doubt that leads a person to deny the reality of her own achievements. The woman who experiences it puts her success down to luck, chance or the goodwill of others, rather than to her genuine abilities.
It was the American psychologist Pauline Rose Clance who first studied this unwarranted sense of insecurity. In her work as a therapist, she noticed this doubt in a great many of the women she saw in consultation (an observation born of clinical listening, not of a formal diagnosis).
How does the doubt take hold, until it becomes a cycle?
Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes observed that the doubt sets in through a chain of behaviours that feed off one another, a genuine snowball effect. The first link in that chain is relentless hard work, driven by the fear of one day being exposed as a fraud in disguise. This excess of zeal pays off: it earns approval from colleagues and superiors.
Another behaviour the two researchers identified takes a more unexpected path: deploying charm and perceptiveness to win the favour of superiors and draw reassurance from them. Yet this support, actively sought as it is, brings only fleeting relief: no sooner is it obtained than it reignites the doubt instead of easing it. You may well recognise this pattern, which turns every success into fresh grounds for self-doubt.
What feeds this feeling in women who are, by every measure, competent?
Clance and Imes, the researchers behind the concept, identified several sources where this feeling takes root: gender stereotypes instilled from childhood, early family dynamics, cultural environment, and a particular attributional style (in other words, the way each woman explains her own achievements). A woman with this style will readily put a success down to circumstance rather than skill, while a failure will seem to her to expose her limits.
Among the women concerned, the researchers also observed signs that go beyond simple passing doubt: generalised anxiety, states bordering on depression, fragile self-confidence, and a tendency to overestimate other people’s competence as a mirror of her own. This mechanism does not, then, reveal any real lack of talent, but a distorted reading of the evidence that success nonetheless keeps placing before her eyes.
How can you break free of it, in practical terms?
A first step is to name this mechanism for what it is: seeking the approval of superiors, as Clance and Imes describe it, brings only passing comfort, and the doubt returns straight afterwards. Recognising this cycle, rather than experiencing it as proof of one's own lack of worth, already changes things. This doubt follows a pattern, repeated and long identified, and understanding that matters more than trying to convince yourself that you are competent.
Keeping a written record of your achievements counterbalances the low self-confidence observed in the women concerned. A conversation with a peer breaks the isolation in which anxiety and the feeling of not belonging take hold. Accepting a compliment without playing it down, finally, means no longer correcting the image others reflect back of your work, and letting that image contradict the doubt rather than feed it.
Naming this syndrome already loosens its grip a little: it says nothing about the real worth of a career, only about the way one has learned to tell its story. Keeping the memory of what you have achieved, talking about it with a peer who knows the same doubt, or simply letting a compliment land without correcting it: these are modest gestures, but repeated often enough, they end up rebalancing the way you see yourself. Staying modest does not mean denying yourself: a fair measure of your own abilities has never been a lack of humility. You have every right to recognise your own work.
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