Striving For Superiority

I had dinner with an old friend from college last week in Dupont Circle. I look forward to our dinners whenever I go to Washington, D.C. for my job as a clinical researcher. In many ways, Dupont Circle and the surrounding neighborhood remind me of parts of San Francisco (where I work), but there is something different about the people there. They are more intense, driven, and ambitious. I enjoy overhearing their conversations in coffee shops and restaurants as they talk about the policies they want to change or how they hope to find a new job that will give them greater power to make a difference. They are attractive, young, and ready to take on the world. It makes me yearn for the days when I was younger. It’s exciting to be around such youthful exuberance. In some ways, Washington, D.C. is the center of the world. And the people who live there seem to treat it that way, at least the people I’ve seen hanging out in Dupont Circle.

What makes people so driven? When I was younger I couldn’t wait to become a researcher and do the kind of research that changes public policy. But as I have grown older, cynicism has set in. Making the world a better place is not as easy as I had thought when I was in my early twenties. There are many worthwhile causes competing for limited funds, and the world is full of ambitious people who also want to make a difference. It’s easy to throw up your arms and say, why bother? Friends who knew me in my early twenties described me as driven. I guess I was driven. Part of my drive was an honest attempt to make a contribution to society, but in the back of my mind, I always wondered about the psychological dynamics that drove me to succeed.

According to psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, ambitious people may be striving for superiority as a way to compensate for a feeling of inferiority. During childhood, one is bound to feel a sense of inferiority. Children are smaller than adults and have difficulty mastering their domain. Eventually, however, children learn to control their environment and feel powerful rather than helpless and inferior. But other people feel extremely inferior and spend their lives striving to become superior to others, striving for self-esteem, power, and self-aggrandizement. It’s like the popular notion that Napoleon conquered Europe because he was short.

There are times when a feeling of inferiority and the need to compensate for it can be productive. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, was frail as a child and exercised until he was physically fit. The need to do reach higher levels of performance may have initially been motivated by a need to compensate for inferiority, but in the end, striving for superiority compels people to develop skills that make a social contribution. As long as one does not merely strive for superiority as a way to compensate for low self esteem or a need to have power over others, the need to strive for superiority can be a positive motivating force.

Are you aware of what motivates you? It’s vital to gain awareness and ensure that you are not trying to merely cover up your deficits, but are truly striving to make a social contribution. When you strive to make social contributions, you are more likely to sharpen your mental edge and achieve success and mastery.