perfectionism, perfectionist, dealing with perfectionism, overcoming perfectionism, perfectionism books, gifted adult information, gifted adult personality

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Stanley Kubrick was the first real perfectionist that I worked with. There just wasn't any way for him to go one take less.. he never gave an inch on anything.  Sydney Pollack - about acting in Eyes Wide Shut - from documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures Although "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999) turned out to be "more complex than I thought it was going to be, " Nicole Kidman says she has no regrets about undertaking the year-and-a-half-long project... Seeming to dismiss rumors that she and Tom Cruise became irritated with Kubrick's perfectionist modus operandi, Kidman said "It was incredibly rewarding, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."   [imdb.com 20th Oct 1998] Kubrick-- by Michel Ciment   //   Stanley Kubrick: Interviews ~ ~ ~ ~ Demi Moore.. resents the fearsome reputation that followed her onto film sets during the 90's. She says, "I was not a diva. I was all for group effort. Everybody who worked for me was part of my team. As for my entourage, I only had an assistant. The other people were hired by the studio to help me during filming.  "I'm sure there were people who thought I was a bitch, but all I did was strive for perfection. I expected others to work as hard as me, but I was not demanding to an unreasonable point."  .. [imdb.com Ap 17 2003] / related page:**social reactions / interactions ~ ~ ~ ~ I never feel that I am getting it right. I just keep trying to get it right. Sometimes I feel it's like two steps forward, three steps back. Like when you think you got it nailed, and then you realize that you don't. It's kind of a work in progress all the time for me. Everything, all of it -- life, career, whatever. .......Cher.......[BUST mag., Summer 2003] ~ ~ Your best feature? My brain.  //  Your worst feature? My brain. What you most would want to change.  My brain. Cher - interviewed by Cynthia McFadden on ABC Primetime Feb. 28, 2002 ~ ~ ~ ~ I work incredibly hard at finding the right material, and I make sure I have the right people in the studio, but I try not to belabor it. .. I don't spend a lot of time analyzing what I do or calculate how it is going to come across. It's just the best I could do at a given time. It's just like relationships. At the time, that was the right person to be with."    Bonnie Raitt       [LA Times, Mar.6.00]

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"Leila's a little bit of a perfectionist," John Pankow says of Leila Kenzle, his castmate on Mad About You.. "She's very concerned that she not mess up her lines, even though she blows lines a lot less than any of us." ... Kenzle.. readily admits, "I don't want to ever screw up." ... In 1993, despite a queasy stomach, she managed to sit through her first Emmy ceremonies. "It used to be that my methodical perfect side wouldn't let me say I wasn't ready, so I had to show up and be perfect, and that made me completely withdraw," she says. "Now I'm much more careful. I only do what I'm ready to do."    [from article: "Phobic No More", People, 12/11/1995]

*related page:**introversion / shyness

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.. .. One of the true inner torments for self-actualizing gifted clients is the struggle to create in the face of creative blocks. These blocks can manifest in a number of forms.  For example, I have a very gifted young client who is a veteran actress, dancer-choreographer, singer-songwriter, and artist. ...

She has been a working professional since childhood and writes about how misapplied perfectionism can cause a creative block: "I come from an exceedingly gifted family. Each member is highly successful, intellectually, personally, professionally and especially creatively.  "Creative exploration was encouraged and rewarded in my family...[However], the older I got and the more proficient I became in the professional creative world of entertaining, the more my own parental eye became a judgmental eye." from article: Counseling Issues with Recognized and  Unrecognized Gifted Adults by Mary Rocamora

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Women are often so terrified of being imperfect. They don't want to be
laughed at. And it holds them back. Young men are taught to take criticism
in a kind of impersonal way.

Psychologists have documented that women believe that approval
is like oxygen, which can make it too painful to be a risk-taker or leader
because you're too visible and the criticism hurts so much.

So one of the things women in the next millennium need is more inner strength
when it comes to criticism and conflict and challenge. One way to do that is to
have high expectations.

Young women should present themselves as if they're running for President.

But women have been raised not to step up to the plate. They're supposed to think
it's cute to say, "Oh, I can't do it. Oh God, I can't believe this." That's considered
feminine, but it's really a lot of whining.

At Woodhull, we won't tolerate it. We expect women to feel fear and anxiety,
and talk about it -- and then get over it. What's fascinating is that a lot of our
graduates say that the best thing about their Woodhull experience is that we have
higher expectations of them than the real world does, and that they didn't want to
go back to their ordinary lives, where expectations were so low.

    Naomi Wolf - quote and photo from Woodhull Institute
 
 

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Allen Says He Often Agrees With Critics Of His Films Woody Allen has conceded that he is the toughest critic of his films and often concurs with negative reviewers. "When I make a film, after I labor over it and sit in the editing room, nothing, in the end, seems funny or wonderful or delightful.

"You think it's embarrassing. Others see it and say it's embarrassing, and I am forced to agree," he told the Toronto Sun on Sunday. Allen maintained that he has never been pleased with the final outcome of his efforts.  "With Manhattan, I looked at it and begged them not to release the movie. I said I'd do a free one to make it up," he recalled. The 1979 film earned Allen an Oscar for best screenplay, the Golden Globe Award for best film, and the British Academy Award  (BAFTA) for best film and best screenplay.  [imdb/wenn.com 8.13.01]

 

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***Bridget Fonda Acting [in the past decade and a half] has gotten harder, which I didn't think would happen. I always thought that the longer you did something the easier it would get, but the longer you do something, the more you require of yourself, so as my ability heightens, the bar raises as well.   [DarkHorizons.com interview, July 6, 2001]

My problem is I want it all, but I want it on my terms. I think 'Oh, God, I wish I had it in me to go and schmooze, because then I might get offered all the parts, and work with all the directors I want to work with.'  And then I think, how exhausting. If I can't get it on my terms, then I guess I just don't want it badly enough to get it on somebody else's. Maybe that's what it all boils down to.    [MovieMaker Magazine interview]

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"I guess I'm fairly meticulous in how I want something shot, but on the other hand, sometimes if it gets a little sloppy, it gets a little energy into it."  director Frank Darabont -  from interview

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.. .. As the new priests gathered in St. Peter's Basilica, John Paul told them Jesus expects a "higher loyalty" from priests, a more rigorous poverty and humility. "He asks of you to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect," he said. "In a word, the Lord wants you to be holy." Jungians may be familiar with the view that this use of "perfect" in the English version of the New Testament is a mistranslation.  The Greek word teleios, we have been told, would have been more accurately rendered as "whole" or "complete."

It is related to telos, end or goal. Since wholeness of development is a prime Jungian value, along with skepticism about persona-level purity, we have been receptive toward the mistranslation idea.  And perhaps a bit smug over our Jungian ability to appreciate it. The stress on wholeness is psychologically inclusive, especially of the shadow as part of the whole.  The emphasis on purity or faultlessness, which is how we have come to understand "perfect," seems superficial and illusory, trying to attain some ideal fantasy of all-goodness by exclusion of the negative through suppression or repression.  The English musical about World War I, Oh What a Lovely War, puts it well: "I shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!" Jung called the shadow "the part of us that we don't want to be part of us."  It can be owned and somewhat integrated into wholeness through painful consciousness, or it can be denied and disowned to enhance self-esteem, at the price of letting it run loose in the unconscious and in the world. from article A More Perfect Union: Perfection  and Wholeness as Developmental Paths -  by James Yandell, M.D., Ph.D. [CG Jung Page] image: Saint Margaret of Antioch

*related pages:......depth psychology : page 1......the shadow self

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"One never notices what has been done;  one can only see what remains to be done." Marie Curie

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"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then
you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself
the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person."

David M. Burns, MD - author of The Feeling Good Handbook

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"I see anorexia as one of many manifestations of having a perfectionistic personality."
clinical psychologist Dr. Steven Hendlin, from article: Perfectly Skinny

> related page: eating disorders
 
 

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Normal perfectionists are described as individuals who "derive a very real sense of pleasure from the labors of a painstaking effort" while neurotic perfectionists are those "unable to feel satisfaction because in their own eyes they never seem to do things good enough to warrant that feeling." ... [Another author] defines perfectionists as "people who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment." from Wayne D. Parker and Karen K. Adkins, "Perfectionism and the Gifted" in Roeper Review, Feb/Mar, 1995

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Ring the bells that still can ring,   Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything   That's how the light gets in

~ Leonard Cohen    from  Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

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"She can be quite murderously challenging in her perfectionism. Take Twenty: 'Are you sure that's good enough?' We're going, [wearily] 'Yeah.' " Director Jane Campion about working with Nicole Kidman on "Portrait of a Lady"

 
 

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"Her great contribution to the camp was her sense of perfectionism.
There they are in this squalid, horrible nightmare, this hell, and she'd say
to the women [camp prisoner choir] practicing, 'No, no, no, do it again,
you were a bit sharp there...' The thing is, it MATTERED to her. FABULOUS!"

  Glenn Close [about her character in "Paradise Road"]
 

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"Andrew is the most meticulous person I've ever worked with -- very specific,
down to gestures and how clean the floor is. He writes with metaphor, and his
pieces work on several different levels."

     Ethan Hawke - about his "Gattaca" director Andrew Niccol [link to interview]
 
 

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Being good is not enough if you dream of being great. contestant in Miss America pageant, Sep 2003   photo from movie Miss Congeniality - starring Sandra Bullock as undercover cop in beauty pageant

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I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.  The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it. Anne Lamott  .. [Utne, Jul-Aug 2003] Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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How was it working with Nancy Meyers on What Women Want? Judy Greer: Nancy Meyers was my first female film director. I liked that she was really able to incorporate what she wanted and what the studio was asking for. She was able to make everyone happy and I admire that.  She was strong and tough and she knew exactly what she wanted. She wouldn't stop until she got exactly what she wanted. That can be a little frustrating, but it's a great way to work because in the end I knew that she was not going to let me do anything badly. I found it very comforting. It was kind of like working with David O. Russell on Three Kings. He's a genius. Very inspiring. ........ [Venice Magazine, February, 2001]

 

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.. .. No, I'm a greatist. I only want to do it until it's great. James Cameron  - about being called a perfectionist  [mrshowbiz.com] ~ ~ Do I have zero temper? I would say no - I'm not Ron Howard! But I'm not Otto Preminger either. I'm pretty intense, but it's more of an issue if you're trying to put on a great show for people, so you shouldn't be d****** around and settling for second-best.  I would say two-thirds of the people I work with are inspired by that challenge and are attracted to it, and the other third say, 'You know what? I'm just trying to make my house payments.  And that's fine too - they'll wind up not working on my next movie, usually by mutual assent. I think that's the thing that's wrong about the hype is that I don't believe I'm ever mean-spirited. ...

.. .. I would say I'm not the easiest person to work with, but where does it say that good stuff comes from easy working situations? I don't think it does.  Unless you're doing a sitcom, and it's the same people every week, and they sit around and have some cappuccinos and knock out the show. Frankly that's not interesting.  James Cameron.. [imdb.com Celebrity News: 21st April 2003] photo above: working on "Ghosts of the Abyss"

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"In his article 'The Destructiveness of Perfectionism: Implications for the Treatment of Depression,' psychologist Sidney J. Blatt, Ph.D., of Yale University notes that investigators have identified at least three different types of perfectionism:     other- oriented, self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism. Other-oriented perfectionism involves demanding that others meet exaggerated and unrealistic standards. Self-oriented perfectionism 'involves exceedingly high, self-imposed, unrealistic standards and an intensive self-scrutiny and criticism in which there is an inability to accept flaw, fault or failure within oneself.' Socially prescribed perfectionism 'is the belief that others maintain unrealistic and exaggerated expectations that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet; but one must meet these standards to win approval and acceptance.'" from American Psychological Association press release: Researcher Links Perfectionism in High Achievers with Depression and Suicide

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"We're so splendidly imperfect. Let's just laugh. And eat mangoes. Naked."

  Sark - author of Living Juicy : Daily Morsels for Your Creative Soul
 
 

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exercise to work through perfectionism

Make two lists: one of what is perfect in your life and one of what is not perfect.
Make these lists as complete as you can. For example:

Perfect                           Not Perfect
My kitchen                      Not enough money
My son's cheerfulness    My daughter's anger
My husband                    My car
My wife                           My job

Picture the first item on your Not Perfect list clearly in your mind. Notice how you feel
when you think about this imperfect situation, thing or person. What physical sensations
are you feeling in your body? What energy locations are they near? Do this for every item.

Now do the same thing with each item on your Perfect list. ... Make a note of the physical
sensations you are feeling in your body, and what energy locations they are near.

Compare what you feel when you think about the perfect items with what you feel when
you think about the items that are not perfect.

If you believe that perfectionism is your compulsion, and you're aware of what you're feeling
in your body when things aren't perfect, look deeper past that feeling.

You're not upset because things aren't perfect. Instead, you're masking your true feelings
with your perfectionism. You are not emotionally aware of what's really going on.

Once you become aware of your emotions and what you're really feeling, you can make
the choice of how act in the next moment. At this point, your compulsion begins to lose
power over you. You begin to gain power over the compulsion.

From summary on oprah.com of presentation on The Oprah Show by Gary Zukav -
author of  The Heart of the Soul : Emotional Awareness
 

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