WILL THE IMPOSTERS PLEASE STAND UP?
DEBRA WELLS
University of Waikato

The Imposter Phenomenon was first identified and written about by Dr. Pauline Rose Clance in 1985. It is experienced by many high-achievers who know an internal feeling of intellectual phoniness. They maintain a stance that they are not capable or bright despite the fact that by external measures this belief is patented not true. This phenomenon is now widely recognised.

The story that follows was written as an exploration of this phenomenon prior to my embarking on a thesis on the topic. It reflects my own personal struggles, and I know from sharing it with other 'Imposters' that it also encapsulates much of their quandary as well.

WILL THE IMPOSTERS PLEASE STAND UP?

The question rung out, "Will the Imposters please stand up". A shameful silence fell across humanity, heads bowed and the sounds of cuckoos could be heard in the falling light of day. Courage, a virtue of certainty was tangibly summonsed, while battles raged in the minds of those who had heard the challenge. Many silently knew that if the Others saw them for who they really were, saw their weakness, then their worlds would be shattered. But they also knew that in finding the strength to own their internal sense of phoniness, a stronghold named fear might be broken.

A slight middle aged woman quietly raised herself up off her ancestral bones and whispered, "I am adopted. I was raised by a family, not my own. They loved me as one of their own, but in their faces I do not find myself. I do not find the story of my ancestors. I do not find my likeness." She felt shame and guilt run cold throughout her body. She should feel gratitude for being loved, and special and chosen. She felt anger, and resentment that she was found wanting by those who had written their story in the fibres of her being. She knew that when the question, "Will the Imposters please stand up" reached her that it was to her that the demand was made. For she was an Imposter - within her lived a person that was not accepted, did not fit, in the place she called home. She had learnt over the years to be quiet and submissive. The person that only she knew was loud, boisterous and she liked to think a little risqué - a person that did not belong in the house of adoption.

A man, sitting in a plush apartment, slowly unwound, a feeling of sheer terror knurled in his stomach. What if people knew, he wondered, what if people knew - my family, my work colleagues, my neighbours. What if they knew? The question echoed within the walls of his closet - what if they knew? Shame and guilt mocked him, "If they knew you would be ostracized forever". This seemed to be an odd retort, as he was already ostracized - he was an imposter in the world of 'normality' - the world called heterosexuality. He was well acquainted with the mask that clung to his face, that stifled his life spirit. A mask with ribbons that had entwined themselves in his flesh.

She felt the aura of the word, for the word itself was yet not in her eleven year old vocabulary. As she lay on her bed she knew that a prince was at any second, going to charge through her bedroom door and rescue her from the man she called dad. With this knowing was however a concurrent knowing that this was fantasy - she had no safe place to hide. For wherever she went, the ones who knew and crouched in terror and shame huddled inside her - the shadow people - who threatened to disclose to those who knew her as Lee, that she was in fact not a bright, capable yet quiet child. She was a creature of shame who wore her face with experience that belied her years.

The week of fasting was drawing to an end; a week of prayer, petition, and agonising over his lack of holiness and dedication to the one he called God. The tortured week of the crucifying of the flesh and endless hours searching the Book for words of hope for his polluted soul. How could he face his congregation on the next Sabbath when he stood before them a man of worthlessness? How could he exhort them to live in victory, when his life was racked with guilt? How could he pray for the healing of those who were broken, when the wounds in his own heart had putrefied? How could he lead others in prayers of forgiveness, when his rage towards the silence of God ate at his conscience? Yet he would don the garments of his calling and lead his flock in all that was required of him and go home and weep tears that found no resting-place. I am not an Imposter he thought, I am nothing more than a worm dressed in fine robes crafted by hands that deserve better.

A ziggurat of books scrambled for a place to stand in the sanctuary she called her bedroom. The day's chosen was lying open beside her where she read her name, Imposter, on page 243. For a moment of eternity her heart beat a tattoo that reverberated throughout her entire body. She felt a tide of shame wash over her, shame and embarrassment and fear. The melange threatened to suck her into a stagnating cave, passivity. She rarely told others that she knew she was an imposter, because she saw on their faces a certain look which said "false modesty". She understood why. Straight A's on every piece of work she handed in. They didn't understand that every piece submitted was placed in the evaluation slot with trepidation, for she knew that it deserved an F. It was not her best work. She could shoot holes through her arguments with a canon. The surprise she felt when discovering an A on the returned paper always made her wonder - wonder why her work was marked in such a manner. What was wrong with the Others' papers? Why could the marker not discern what utter drivel her pontificating really was?

On each return of a marked assignment she experienced an almost overwhelming urge to throw this whole academic pursuit into an abyss, never again to be pursued. Surely, if in this place of academe, they would be able to pick the phonies, the interlopers at one hundred paces. This seemed not to be the case and remained a constant source of mystery to her.

She often wondered why she was the way she was. She understood that if one considered the scenario logically, no logic could be found. The evidence seemed to suggest that indeed she was bright. The double bind of this though was overwhelming. Throughout her school days she had done poorly. Her family, a place of unrest, named her' black sheep' and indeed she felt like one. She was convinced that she was adopted ­that was the only explanation she could find that satisfied her knowing - she was different. There was no getting around that. The word 'bright' however was never mentioned. If it was true. If she did have a modicum of intelligence - the anger that this engendered was intense. Why was I never encouraged? Why was it never recognised? Why was I labelled different? The word' different' always silenced her. It snatched away her voice. The need to fit in, to belong and the desire to stretch her fragile wings and learn were with at odds with each other.

Knowledge is not a free gift. It comes at a high price. The price is pain. The pain of feeling cheated. The pain of always being different. The pain of remaining outside of the camp. And yet she remembered a dream from nights of the past. A dream about truth and knowledge.

Once eons ago, truth and knowledge were held in the heavens as a magnificent crystal ball. A time came when it was dropped to earth. As it landed it shattered into millions of slithers. These slithers embedded themselves into the natural world and people's hearts. People did different things with it as they found the slithers. For some, it was draped in clothes of purple and ermine and worshipped. Others took it and buried it because its power was so evident. While others made weapons of war and slaughtered their neighbours in an attempt to usurp and silence differing and seemingly opposing ways of knowing. Very few people saw the potential to bring each's individual slither to a meeting place and recreate the original sphere. Those that did were labelled as mad and cast out of their society. And she had woken with tears lacing her darkened face.

n which world was she an imposter? At any time she engaged in a variety of 'worlds'. Each had its own rules and ways of knowing but none was complete on its own. Was she an imposter because she walked in 'worlds' that did not honour and value each other? Worlds that sneered at or ignored one another? The task of walking in different worlds was fraught with tensions and yet she had chosen to do so. The cost, pain, was a cost that only she could pay. Was it too high a price to experience to strengthening of her intellectual wings and discovering horizons unexplored? She knew that the tentative 'no' that parted her lips, was her truth. She would always know the feeling of not fitting in, being different. In her world of birth she was indeed an imposter.

The word, imposter, in the book leapt off the page. She avidly read on. She had never heard it discussed before. As she devoured the following pages she saw herself reflected in the general characteristics. This book could have been written specifically about her.

"The imposter generally comes from a conflictual home". Hmm, she thought - I suppose that that is true, though in her early years the tensions, emotional tight ropes and terror were normal. All homes were like that.

"A barren land emotionally". Was her 'land' barren? Were their shady trees under which to laugh and rest and be? Few and far between, but there were a few.

"A fear of failure". She laughed. When a sense of failure is all one has ever known, with the fear comes familiarity and with familiarity comes rest.

"A fear of success". This seems rather obvious to her - for to succeed threatened to shatter the familiar. It raised questions about what could have been. It also set a precedent that raised itself like Mount Everest before every effort. Success was indeed a formidable companion.

"An introvert" - When the only safe place in the barren land is one's mind it is difficult to be anything but an introvert. One's mind is surely the greatest gift bestowed on humanity - the final bastion against those that would see her dismissed as crazy, different or disposable. She also knew however that the mind could be a prison, a place of torment and endless unrest. For the mind, unmet, ever runs in circles that eddy out into regions unexplored, dark and mysterious.

"Intense feelings of shame and guilt". These troublesome companions clung to her like a drenched coat, they caused her to stumble and bow in the face of any who would dare to take the sodden garment from her for she knew that underneath she was naked. The story of the Emperor and His New Clothes had always amused her as a child. How could that silly man be so consumed with his sense of importance that he would feign ignorance? And yet, how would be, to be unafraid to be 'naked' and carefree. An imponderable quest, she felt.

"A need to look good to others". Yet another double bind. If one looked good to others then they expected things from you – they 'liked' you - this she knew was not necessarily a thing to be sought. To stand out, to been seen was something that had filled her with terror as a child. The countless times she had stood motionless willing herself to be invisible - hmm. And yet she did want to be liked by the Others, to be seen and recognised by them. This she decided was a double-edged sword.

Indeed this book was written about her. A strange sense of comfort settled over her as she lay staring at a velveteen sky which lay like draped muslin over the horizon.

And the plea rung out, "Will the Imposters please stand up". And she knew that this cry was not an accusation, a sentence, it was a cry for company, a plea for Others to join in a dance of recognition, celebration. A dance of the Emperors. She slid off her bed and trembling walked towards the door. Outside, night had fallen gently and with it the hush of waiting. Her feet found the dewy lawn and she stood. I must lift my eyes to the Others. As she found the pinpricks of light over her, she heard, in her bones, a stirring, a trembling. And mothers stood up and fathers, the judges raised themselves, and the juries. The learned stood and the illiterate. The wealthy and the hungry. Humanity was shaking off the binds that had held them to the known. The quest for new beginnings had begun. The dance had begun. And they were not alone.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

This reading list is provided for those who may wish to follow up on the topic of the Imposter Phenomenon. It is by no means exhaustive and not all of the readings are specifically related to the Imposter Phenomenon. Some of them are related to very similar manifestations of the same experience. I trust that it is helpful to you.

Bell, L. A. (1990). The gifted woman as imposter. Advanced Development Journal, 2, 55-64. Clance, P. R. (1985). The imposter phenomenon: overcoming the fear that haunts your success. Georgia: Peachtree Publishers.
Clance, P. R. & O'Toole, M.A. (1988). The imposter phenomenon: An internal barrier to empowerment and achievement. Women & Therapy 6 (3), 51-64.
Clarkson, P. (1994). The Achilles Syndrome. Dorset: Element Books Ltd.
Imes, S. & Clance, P. R. (1984). Treatment of the Imposter Phenomenon in high-achieving women. In C. M. Brody (Ed.), Women therapists working with women: New theory and process of feminist therapy. (pp. 69-85). New York: Springer Publishing.
Thompson, T. (1993). Characteristics of self-worth protection in achievement behaviour. British Journal of Educational Psychology 63, 469-488.
Thompson, T. (1994). Self-worth protection: Review and implications for the classroom. Educational Review 46 (3), 259-274.
Thompson, T., Davidson, J. A., Barber, J. G. (1995). Self-worth protection in achievement motivation: Performance effects and attributional behavior. Journal of Educational Psychology 87 (4), 598-610.