According to the American website  Atelophobia.org  Atelophobia  is:

A mental illness…  in which a person’s normal thinking, behaviors and responses to surroundings or certain circumstances are impaired.

Etymologically speaking the word atelophobia is composed of two greek words; the prefix Atelo(s) means imperfect and the postfix phobia means fear. Therefore the word Atelophobia literally means they fear of being imperfect. People who have this psychological conditioned are termed as Atelophobic. Atelophobia is classified as an anxiety disorder as are most phobias and therefore it is the specialty of mental health professionals.

Atelophobia is the fear of not doing something right or the fear of not being good enough. Quite simply put it’s a fear of imperfection. Persons suffering from this psychological disorder may be often depressed when their perceived expectations do not match reality.

An atelophobic has the fear that whatever he is doing is wrong in some way. Even making a call, writing something, eating or even talking in front of others is difficult for them as they are afraid they are making some kind of error in their task. This makes that person extremely self-conscious.

The person makes a goal, which he considers as perfect. Unfortunately, that goal cannot be reached. This makes that person miserable and he loses more self-confidence, strengthening his belief that he can never do anything correct.

 

I think that in the UK we would call not being able to get things right as  ‘Being a Bit of a Twat’

For the sake of argument let us assume that Atelophobia does exist as a genuine disorder but is it just an ‘Anxiety Disorder’, a neurosis,  is  it a ‘Syndrome’, a collection of different behaviours and psychological  traits that cause  the fear of not being ‘good enough or could there be such a thing as an Atelophobic Personality Trait?

How could such a Personality Trait be formed?

 

In a previous post that I wrote about the Brontes on ths blog  I  included the following  in Appendix A

APPENDIX A

Personality Adaptations

 

Personality develops   in response to the social and family environment of a  child and the  standard  and level of care it receives from the primary caregiver/s.

The child responds,  not to the motives of the caregiver, but to their behaviours and the child’s interpretation of them.

The child flourishes when there is consistency in its needs being met and fails to flourish when they are, for whatever reason, malevolent or accidental, not adequately met.

This process starts from birth (some believe that it starts even earlier than that) and affects all human beings.

The child cannot ask overtly  for its needs to be ‘recognised’ and met by the caregiver, and an infant cannot even voice its needs but will ‘expect’ this recognition  as a matter of course and will respond to it accordingly,  be the care positive, negative or absent.

If the caregiving is not meeting the needs of the child for feeling loved, for  having a sense of safety, belonging and a positive regard afforded to  it as being an individual then the environment is termed  ‘invalidating’.

Development of the Personality is adversely affected by an ‘invalidating environment’, one in which there is a failure by the caregiver to meet the needs of the child.

Invalidation in an environment  is not just the product of abuse or violence in the home but by ongoing trauma or inattentive treatment.

 

Based on the book ‘Personality Adaptations’ by Van Joines and Ian Stewart

 

So, although the book does not mention an ‘Atelophobic’  Personality Trait  I wonder whether  if a child is raised in an environment in which the caregiver(s) negate or punish any attempt by that child to ‘prove’ or in any way demonstrate that it is special by, in ‘Transactional Analysis’ terms giving the child ‘cold prickly’ strokes instead of ‘warm fuzzy’ strokes or even by giving ‘extinguishing’ non-responses to  any demonstration of its ‘specialness’ the child could develop an Atelophobic personality’ in response to the lack of any validation for its own attempts to express its Individuality or psychological separation from the caregiver(s).  Is this a ‘Do Not Exist’ message from the Caregiver?

 The Invalidation comes from the overt message  in words of ‘I  love you and you are special’ and the covert message in behaviour of ‘I belittle any behaviour of yours to  demonstrate your specialness’.

.In these Transactions ‘power’ remains with the Caregiver(s),  a power that they will avidly guard and maintain and through which the child is kept in a permanant state of doubt and even paranoia as it strives for the unqualified acceptance that it ‘needs’ to thrive but his attempts are thwarted as he  is given ‘validation’ not by dint of it’s own actions but as a ‘favour’ or gift from the caregiver

The child’s situation can be made more fragile if it is given a ‘warm fuzzy’ stroke  when it does something that the caregiver approves of;  the stroke is given not for having acheived  but for acheiving something that causes pleasure to the Caregiver.

For example, a child tells it’s Caregiver, in expectation of a “Well Done”:

“I got a 90% score in this exam at school.”

but receives instead:

“You could have got 95%,  I expected such  of you” or, what is possibly more damaging to the young developing ego,  “Don’t brag about it.  Nobody likes a bighead.”

The description on the website says that:

An atelophobic has the fear that whatever he is doing is wrong in some way. Even making a call, writing something, eating or even talking in front of others is difficult for them as they are afraid they are making some kind of error in their task. This makes that person extremely self-conscious.

The person makes a goal, which he considers as perfect. Unfortunately, that goal cannot be reached. This makes that person miserable and he loses more self-confidence, strengthening his belief that he can never do anything correct.’but I would suggest that in the case of an Atelophobic Personality  it is not the neurotic pursuit of ‘perfection’ but in the belief that nothing that you do is good enough or adequate enough.   Such a person may be prone to Procrastination or to continual disappointment with their performance in a situation and  even if they ‘complete’ the task it will not be done well enough and will expose the person to ridicule.

I would dispute some of that description inasmuch as   I conject that the person has been taught  to believe  not that they have made an error or mistake but that whatever they have done  is not good enough.

 

Now, if we accept that Atelophobia is the fear or anxiety about not being able to complete a task ‘well enough’ the Atelophobic Personality Trait would be the ‘belief that the person is not ‘good enough,  not a neurosis about any task they may undertake but about they themself.

 

Think about it