Customer Reviews

The Impostor Phenomenon: Overcoming the Fear That Haunts Your Success

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The book presents Dr.Pauline Rose Clance's writings about people who suffer from 'Impostor Phenomenon'. Impostor Phenomenon refers to people who believe they are pretending to be something they are not. They have a really hard time in accepting success, compliments and anything good. Their belief is all the success and good things are a result of coincidence and not due to their own skills and capabilities. At a surface level, it might sound like this is excessive humbleness, but at the core is a very different situation. These people in reality do not have faith or belief in their capabilities.

The book offers various insights about the reason for people developing this phenomenon ranging from family background to work pressure. But the end result is still the same, i.e. frustration, sadness, hopelessness and anxiety for both the victim and people related to the victim. The book offers background into the problem, its symptoms and how to help victims suffering from this issue. I got attracted towards the book after reading an article in Scientific American Mind about Impostor Phenomenon. Its an insightful book which presents plenty of case studies explaining the problem with some solutions for helping the victims.

I was led to this book by an article in Scientific American Mind magazine, and subsequently decided to write my end-of-term paper on the topic for my advanced psychopathology course in graduate school. The book definitely seems to be written for the lay-person, avoiding technical language and over-complicated phrasing. It takes a fairly complex psychological construct and makes it very accessible to anyone, with or without any background in psychology. If you are looking for more in-depth, specific research, I would direct you to the relevant research articles in journals. This book is a GREAT place to start though! It helped me to get a working concept of the theory in my mind before beginning my wading through more technical research.

This book was phenomenal. It helped me realize that it was not being arrogant to acknowledge that I am smart and I did not get to where I am because I work harder, longer and was luckier than others, I deserve it. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with feelings that they really are not good enough - READ THIS BOOK!

This out of print book is something that I heard mentiond on a PBS interview.It relates to many of the feelings I had during a working career that many considered sucessful.I always felt that the picture of myself as seen by others was not genuine.The Imposter Phenomenon helped me understand why.