the multi-determination of perfectionism in the nyt
“Our research shows that successful perfectionists are successful in spite of it, not because of it,” says Tom Greenspon, a psychologist in Minneapolis and author of “Moving Past Perfect” and other books. “If you worrying more about how you are doing than what you are doing, you’ll stumble.”
the flip side of the coin and evolution
“ I felt no sense that I carried a handicap that would render my efforts futile should I again face deep trouble. In fact, I felt a heightened sense of agency. Anything and everything I did to improve my own environment and experience—every intervention I ran on myself, as it were—would have a magnified effect. In that light, my short/short allele now seems to me less like a trapdoor through which I might fall than like a springboard—slippery and somewhat fragile, perhaps, but a springboard all the same.”
-David Dobbs in The Atlantic on the “orchid hypothesis” in which a genetic vulnerability for depression under stress also encompasses an exceptionally positive response to environmental nurturing.