ENEMY OF THE GOOD

The pain of perfectionism.

- BY LESLIE JAMISON

Admirable striving is one thing, but a true need to be perfect can be terrorizing.

When Gordon Flett, a psychology professor who has spent his career studying perfectionism, was bringing up his two daughters, he was determined to help them understand that they didn't need to be perfect. As they grew older, they would tease him whenever he was critical: “Aren't you supposed to be teaching us it’s O.K. not to be perfect?” Despite his efforts, Flett noticed that his elder daughter, Hayley, showed some telltale signs: highly meticulous, she was routinely deemed perfectionist by teachers who graded the tests she'd stay up half the night studying for. When Hayley was ten, she took a test he'd developed with his longtime collaborator, Paul Hewitt—a questionnaire designed to identify perfectionism in children. Tallying her score, Flett was surprised to see that she didn’t seem to be a perfectionist at all—so surprised that he wondered if there was something wrong with the test. Seven years later, though, Hayley took an adult version, and her perfectionism was beyond dispute. Flett was mystified until she explained that, as a child, she'd internalized the message that she shouldn't aspire to perfection. So, like any true perfectionist, she'd aced the test.