Achievement inhibition in contemporary women: developmental considerations

With a decrease in recent years in the external impediments which prevent women from realizing their full potential has come a better view of internal factors. The author explores developmental and psychodynamic issues in the paradoxical situation in which women fear to achieve what they have long desired. The author describes clinical manifestations of success phobia, and analyzes symptom origin within a developmental and psychodynamic framework, and illustrates the types of success inhibition arising from family and early social variables, separation-individuation problems, pathological narcissism, and Oedipal conflict.