Imposter Syndrome Revisited and Revised

 If you can access it, this article is amazing:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/the-dubious-rise-of-impostor-syndrome?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I have to confess I have never experienced this syndrome, and therefore I thought there might be something wrong with me.  Ah, ha! That's a form of irony. Anyway, I worked hard for any success I achieved and figured I had nothing to hide in that realm; my work was an open book, if my personal life and background were not. And anything I did achieve was all God's doing anyway, so it wasn't ultimately about me. 

This article interrogates the concept,which was never called a syndrome (and therefore a form of mental illness), only a phenomenon, and as it turned out, so common among a certain type of woman (white, mostly) that it couldn't be "pathologized."  

To me it seems like it was an inverted form of narcissism or at least self-obsession. Or, for some, a form of shame. "You'll be revealed as not as competent as you are" is the message. By whom? how? Don't we all make mistakes? Further, it was used against women, seized on by some to shame them more. 

Now it's been turned on its head. Maybe it just needed to be put to rest and buried.