In our culture we tend to glamorize success, especially when it’s hard-earned or beats the odds: individuals who succeed despite great obstacles; people who profit from courageous business ventures; those who rise to fame because they persevere; and some whose great talents become recognized. We also celebrate those who lived through traumatic circumstances that have, in some cases, taken the lives of others. There are also less visible but significant successes, relative to the achievements of others, such as maintaining a profitable business when competitors are failing, keeping your job when your colleagues are laid off, or having a pleasurable and secure connection with someone when your friends are lonely and unattached. In any case, there can be a price that comes with success.
Success can be calculated in a variety of ways, and achieving one’s ideals is a primary way in which it can be measured. A motivating force in one’s life is striving for a sense of worthiness in an effort to match the image of one’s ideals, and to avoid failures and shortcomings that become the internal criteria for guilt and shame (Morrison, 1983). Approaching one’s ideals can bolster a sense of feeling wanted, needed, and important and can mask feelings of vulnerability. Although guilt, shame, and their accompanying vulnerability can hide beneath success, they can become conscious as a sense of fraudulence or anxiety about not truly being worthy. When you strive to succeed you idealize where you want to be, even imagining that the people who reside in those coveted positions are happy and fulfilled. But once you get there you might recognize that the same human vulnerabilities you sought to disown with a new identity still exist, even if they are in a different form.
Some highly successful people subsequently become miserable, self-destructive, or self-defeating. They might experience anxiety or depression, overindulge in alcohol or substances, or engage in behaviors that risk their relationships or their own life. If humans strive to achieve their ideals, then it’s curious why one would have such experiences once an ideal is achieved? We witness this repeatedly in the case of celebrities and public figures who are subjected to humiliation, both self-imposed as well as a result of being discovered by others. Along with high success comes notoriety, where others look in at the successful person and may, in some cases, have a desire to see that person collapse. Tabloids revel in the vulnerabilities and self-destructive behavior of those who are famous.
The downside of success has been a subject of speculation for at least a century. In Freud’s (1925) paper about “Those Wrecked By Success,” he stated that, “people occasionally fall ill precisely when a deeply-rooted and long-cherished wish has come to fulfillment. It seems then as though they were not able to tolerate their happiness; for there can be no question that there is a causal connection between their success and their falling ill.” He concluded that the “forces of conscience”–our sense of guilt in general–induce illness in consequence of success. In a later essay, Freud (1936) compared such occurrences to the experience of guilt when one achieves something perceived as “too good to be true.” This was based on his personal experience of visiting the Acropolis at Athens, a place that he had never expected to see in his lifetime, which he perceived as an accomplishment far beyond what had been achieved by his parents. This accomplishment, he believed, was unconsciously perceived as disloyalty to his parents or “filial piety,” as he referred to it.
Whether or not you appreciate Freud as a great thinker, or can forgive his misconceptions given the limitations of the socio-cultural context in which his theories emerged, he was on to something of value in considering why people destroy what they have been driven to achieve or accomplish: guilt. Similarly, the more contemporary notion of “survivor guilt” refers to the belief that fate has treated you better than others in your life, or that your favorable treatment was at someone else’s expense. In moving beyond what was deemed possible, or in attaining one’s ideals, a loyalty to parents, siblings, or peers can interfere with embracing accomplishment and even result in depression or anxiety (Weiss, 1993). Thus, a strong conscience may lead you to have empathy for those you have surpassed when you are successful, or you may have empathy for yourself as you become disconnected from the childhood identity that you have risen above.
Today, when humans are so much more visible to everyone else in the world, there may be other factors that play a role in the downside of success; namely, shame and the pressure of continued expectation. Once you are at the top you have to deal with the expectations of others and their potential disappointment. The stressors are not about guilt but instead about shame in the form of interpersonal worries: the responsibility of keeping people thinking highly of you and living up to their expectations.
Arrogance and invincibility can come along with positions of power and success, which may be condoned by a culture in need of heroes. But in our present culture we know so much about our heroes–how much money they make, their personal life, and where they go wrong–that fantasy can give way to an unappealing reality. Admirers may perceive entitlements that a successful person receives as shameful and undeserved. And, at any level, success may also be accompanied by temptations. Success itself doesn’t necessarily draw a person to self-destruct. It simply affords a person the possibilities that can lead them to do it. Being extremely successful might be the apogee of what one can do–you can only go down from there.
It’s likely that the majority of people who achieve great success can manage the challenges and expectations, and they are able to cope with the opportunities that success affords them, rather than defeat themselves. The weight of success today may not result in guilt, as Freud found in his era, but instead in the potential to experience anxiety and shame. Present-day success carries with it the opportunity to make stupid mistakes and unwise decisions, while everyone else can see you in your underwear on twitter.
References
Freud, S. (1916). Those wrecked by success. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 14, 316-331.
Freud, S. (1936). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis: An open letter to Romain Rolland on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 22:239-48.
Morrison, Andrew P. (1986). “Shame, ideal self, and narcissism,.” In Essential Papers on Narcissism. Andrew Morrison, Ed. New York and London: New York University Press.
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This blog is in no way intended as a substitute for medical or psychological counseling. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Originally published at www.psychologytoday.com