Fear of Success
Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. So speaks Lady Macbeth upon the attainment of the aim of her ambition (act 3, scene 2). Is this expressio
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Fear of Success DAVID WARD TRESEMER
PLENUM PRESS . NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tresemer, David. Fear of success. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Success. 2. Fear. I. Title. BF637.S8T65 ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2330-3 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4684-2328-0
158'.1
77-3369
e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-2328-0
©1977 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 227 West 17th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any fonn or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written pennission from the Publisher
Preface Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
So speaks Lady Macbeth upon the attainment of the aim of her ambition (act 3, scene 2). Is this expression of a fear of success the consequence of the highly competitive arena in which she is striving to achieve? Will this sentiment later lead to the avoidance of this or other forms of success? Does she fear success because she is a woman? While the fear and avoidance of success are ideas that are not new to psychology or to human behavior, recent work by Matina Homer has excited great interest in the psychological measure of a personal disposition to avoid success and a behavioral measure of that avoidance. It is with this recent wave of research and writing that Part II of this book is concerned. Great personal interest was stimulated in the "fear of success" concept. It is not only the hypochondriacs who find in the idea of a "fear of success" syndrome an explanation for the course of their lives. In Part I are presented the earlier forms which the concept of "fear of success" took, especially in psychoanalytic theory and personality theory, originating with Freud's discussion of "those wrecked by success," but citing some of the much older cultural traditions involving a fear and/or avoidance of success. Matina Horv
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PREFACE
ner's work is discussed in terms of the background from which she derived the term "fear of success" and which led her to the inference that women fear success. Current alternative formulations for the same phenomena in the social and behavioral sciences are offered to broaden the range of experiences and behavior suggested by a "fear" of "success." Chapter 2 sets the scene for the broadest questions concerning "fear of success": what is meant by "success?" Is there really a gender difference in this response? What are the psychological and behavioral dynamics behind a "fear of success?" The last chapter of Part I explores the idea of a "fear of success" from a social psychological point of view, demonstrating how many current social psychological ideas or subfields use different words to describe similar phenomena. These are all integrated into a "theory of boundary-mainte
