What Carl Jung Would Tell You About Your Perfectionism

You notice everything that’s wrong.  And you feel compelled to fix it all because it should be perfect. This  means you sometimes pressure yourself and others to be perfect. It’s an exhausting way to live, but you feel somebody’s got to do it.

But what if Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was onto something — that rigid perfectionism shows that you’ve fallen into an archetypal pattern that splits you from your instincts and keeps you from finding the true purpose of your tendencies?

Jung believed that perfection was never about precision. It’s about wholeness. And no matter how misdirected our energy becomes, that’s the goal that really drives us.

I’ve often wondered how Jung would have worked with some of the people that come to see me, especially the perfectionists. I don’t take everything Jung says as gospel, but I’ve found that his basic philosophy is a very good place to start. Here’s what came to me as I imagined his consultation with Percy.

*   *   *

Percy: Good morning, Dr. Jung. I was referred to you by Gary Trosclair, a therapist in New York. I’d been looking for a specialist here in Switzerland to help me deal with what my girlfriend thinks is perfectionism, if not obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.  But I couldn’t find anyone that specialized in it, so Gary thought that a Jungian analyst might be able to help me. And I’m hoping you can tell me whether I have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

Carl Jung: I’d be happy to see if I can help you, but I want to clarify first that while I am the famous Swiss psychiatrist named Carl Jung, I am not a Jungian. Thank God. And while diagnoses are a necessary evil to help us communicate and get a rough idea about what patients are suffering from, I don’t have much interest in them.

Percy: That’s OK, perhaps it will help me to work on my, well, ok, let’s call it perfectionism for now, though I’m not so sure it’s a problem.

My new girlfriend, Janus, tells me it is a problem. I often make suggestions for her, but she feels I’m being controlling. I really love her, and she’s already wonderful. But her life would be so much better if she would just listen to me about how to do things. What she calls control and a need for order, I just call improvement and an appreciation of stability.

I constantly see where things are off and how to fix them. It’s almost impossible for me to have a moment in which my mind is not noticing what’s wrong. While I don’t think it’s normal, I’m also not convinced it’s bad. I don’t think we can just act as like everything is fine, when clearly it’s not.

I’m Director of Compliance at a bank, and that all serves me well there, though I have been told at times I’m heavy-handed. But I’m not worried about that. At least they take me seriously. What I’m really worried about is losing my girlfriend.

Maybe I need some help in how I talk to her about these things.

Do you think you can help me?

Do You Want to Change?

Carl Jung: It will be more a matter of helping you to help yourself, but let’s see what we can do.

First, I should ask you. Do you want to change? If you are here just to placate your girlfriend, you might want to save your time and money. Is that the only reason you are here?

Percy: I do believe in how I’m living. I think that I behave well. But it would be good if I could turn down the noise in my head.

I mentally correct people’s grammar. I cringe when they aren’t efficient. And my alarm bells go off whenever people aren’t rational. And don’t get me started about when they’re immoral. It gets very noisy in my head when I don’t correct them. I really feel I should, and sometimes I do.

I would be much more popular if I didn’t correct them. But popularity isn’t important to me.

Carl Jung: What is important to you?

Percy: Doing things the right way and being productive. When I can’t be productive, I get a little down.

But I feel like I’m getting indulgent. What does it matter what my mind sounds like? The only really important thing is how much I get done. Everything else just seems like a small price to pay for being a good person.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Carl Jung: Yet you don’t want to lose your girlfriend. Why is keeping her so important, if living correctly and productively are the only things that are important?

Percy: Yes, well, I guess I overstated my case. She is important to me, and I do like to be around her. She keeps things light. While I would never want to be like her, it’s nice having her around. I like watching her smile and laugh and have a good time. She’s also a really good dancer. Not that I would ever dance. But I do like watching her.

Carl Jung: It sounds to me like she’s living out something for you that you won’t let yourself live out. You get vicarious gratification from her.

Percy: Sir?

Jung: We’ll get back to that. But let me catch up with you here. It sounds like you would like to change what’s happening in your head. That might mean shifting your priorities. But you may find it worth it, because there is a connection between the noise in your head and Janus’s complaints about you.

Percy: That’s interesting, but I don’t see how that could work.

Patterns to Learn From: Heroes, Saints and Prophets

Jung: Look, everyone is different, but there are patterns that can inform us as to what is going on inside you, and what you might need to change in order to quiet the alarms and not lose your girlfriend. Recognize the patterns in yourself and you gain control where you really need it.

Since we come from the country that brought us precision watches, private banks, the protestant reformation, and an uncompromising approach to rules, these are patterns I’m quite familiar with. More importantly, these are patterns that you may accept as normal and even beneficial–even when they’re not.

So far, I suspect that you might be caught in a negative version of the patterns that heroes and saints live out, emphasizing self-sacrifice and virtue. More specifically, you may identify with the archetype of the prophet or the preacher, the heroic saint who feels the responsibility to tell everyone the right way to do things.

Percy: But Doctor Jung, I am no saint! I am quite flawed!

Jung; Ah, yes, that’s what they all say. That’s part of being a saint.

Once you recognize these patterns in yourself, you can start to make more conscious decisions about your values and how to live.

But I must warn you, this will not be as easy as you seem to be imagining.

I should also warn you that I am old skool. I am influenced more by stories that are hundreds and thousands of years old than by influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers. This might seem odd to you at first, but eventually you might find it refreshingly informative.

Percy: That does sound strange and a little daunting to me, but I’m at least open to hearing about it.

History and Causes of the Problem

Jung: So, tell me, when did this all start?

Percy: Well, I can’t remember it ever not being like this, but it did seem to ramp up when I got to university, and it gets even louder when I’m under pressure.

Jung: What sort of pressure?

Percy: Pressure to succeed and measure up, exams, interviews, performance evaluations. I do worry that I won’t live up to the expectations I’ve set myself up for, so I go into overdrive to prove that I am okay.

Jung: My colleague Alfred Adler would say “AHA! You have an inferiority complex and you are trying to compensate for it!” He was onto something, and it might be true to some extent about you, but that’s only part of the story. I have different thoughts about it, but go on.

Why the angst about proving yourself?

Percy: I’m not sure. I mean, maybe I could dig up some stuff about my family and history, but there’s nothing dramatic. I’m not sure anything like that would have caused it.

Jung: That may be the case. None of us has a perfect childhood or history, and certainly some of us have had it much worse than others. But I’m not convinced that the correlation between early troubles and mental health is as exact and reductive as many think it is. Troubles can also lead to resilience as well. It’s who we are and how we respond that counts.

Still, we would need to acknowledge the difficulties you experienced and see how you learned to cope with them. But that, my friend, will only get us so far.

Percy: That makes sense to me.  But wouldn’t it be naïve to think that we don’t need to prove ourselves to the world?

Jung: That’s a good point. You’re right. But I see any proving we need to do as a practical, secondary part of life. It is a means, not an end. If you’re always thinking about how to prove yourself you can’t express yourself. I would describe that as the ego always wanting to remain in control and dismissing other parts of you. Your ego wants to have its way no matter what other parts would have to be left out.

But help me make the connection between being perfectionist and critical, and proving yourself. I understand that you are not interested in being popular, but it does seem that having others respect you is important to you.

Percy: That’s true. If I maintain high standards, standards of perfection for myself and others, no one can accuse me of being substandard. That’s the thing that frightens me the most, being accused of not trying hard enough or being lazy or selfish.

Jung: Or indulgent?

Percy: Well, yes.

Proving Percy

Jung: What do you imagine it would take to prove yourself so that you felt more secure?

Percy: I don’t know. Maybe cure cancer, or find a way to safely contain AI. I’m only half-joking. I have no desire to be famous. But I do imagine that I wouldn’t feel as insecure about being respected if I did achieve something substantial.

Jung: I doubt it. I’ve treated some remarkably successful people who only felt more inferior the more they achieved success. Not to mention that it appears you’ve already achieved a fair amount of success. More success may just lead to more insecurity, what’s now fashionably called imposter syndrome.

When we identify with our persona, the mask we show to the world, we can get very anxious about the discrepancy between how we portray ourselves, and who we really are. Proving that we have some value is part of having a healthy persona, but identifying with it exclusively causes us to be anxious and work too hard at proving we are who we advertise ourselves to be.

If you want the world to believe that the mask is actually you, or, even worse, if you believe that the mask you are wearing is actually you, there is no room for the real you to come out and live.

You want everyone to think that you’re right and upright, but deep inside, you probably feel that you are downright worthless. And so you struggle to feel otherwise.

There is a dark side to being chronically virtuous. I would call it your shadow. It shows up in your insistence that you know the truth and the way that you communicate that truth to yourself and others. That’s what Janus is concerned about. It’s very controlling.

Percy: Yes, I have some awareness of some of these things, but even if I were willing to give up my productivity and perfectionism, it’s hard to change these feelings. I do try to tell myself to loosen up sometimes, but it’s hard. Still, this is all very indulgent.

Inner Dialogue and Inner Dachshunds

Jung: Attendez, monsieur. You just said that you tell yourself to loosen up. Who’s telling who?

Percy: It’s just a saying, you know.

Jung: No, it’s much more than just a saying.

Percy: You mean I have, like, a split personality or something?

Jung: Well, not in any pathological way. We all have different parts. But the questions are, how conscious are we of these other parts, who’s in charge, and how well do they all get along? What part of you needs to loosen up, and what part of you knows that you need to loosen up?

Percy: The part that feels I’m being indulgent may need to loosen up. And the other part, the part that knows I should loosen up, is faint and weak. I usually can’t hear it with all the noise.

Jung: Do you have any recurring dreams? They often show the parts of ourselves that we can’t hear well.

Percy: Oh, you mean like when I dream of a Dachshund that’s locked up in the closet, needs to do his business, and wants to go out and play? Yeah, well, I have that dream a lot.

Jung: Yes, that’s just the kind of thing I was wondering about. What are your associations to Dachshunds?

Percy: They’re cute and vulnerable. And they were bred to dig deeply in the earth to catch badgers. But they don’t really do anything these days. They just lay around, consume kibble, and crap.

Jung: Oh, so they aren’t productive?

Percy: Not a bit.

Jung: And do they need to prove themselves?

Percy: Not to my knowledge.

Jung: Have you ever seen a dachshund make their owner smile?

Percy: Well, yes.

Jung: That’s not doing anything?

Percy: I would not have considered that significant.

Jung: That’s part of the problem. Your bar for significance is very high. Your dachshund would never be able to jump over it, so you dismiss its feelings and lock it up. Then you are split. And when you’re split, you can’t be productive in a meaningful way. You don’t have a common north star to guide you. You are pulled in different directions.

When you have this dream, your unconscious chooses the dog to suggest a different perspective that might heal the split. It wants to compensate your conscious viewpoint, your ego, which is split off from your instincts.  All dogs are instinctual creatures. They don’t think about right and wrong. They don’t count how many productive projects they’ve completed.

I suspect that you would have preferred your dream dog to be a strong German shepherd or a noble Labrador retriever. That would have fit better with your persona.

Percy: That’s true.

Jung: But you dream of a dachshund because it is humble and vulnerable. It compensates your somewhat inflated idea that you are responsible to teach the world how to be better. What if, instead, you could make someone smile as the dachshund does?

Percy: That would be a stretch for me.

Jung: Well, stretching is good as far as I am concerned.

I also suspect that your unconscious chose the image because, like the dachshund, you are no longer connected to your original purpose. He no longer digs, unless he’s just tearing up your lawn for no good reason. Which I’m afraid you’re doing in your relationship with Janus.

I’d recommend you take this recurring dream seriously and let your dog out. It is a good image for someone who is so obsessed with morality and productivity.

Percy: What would it mean to let my dog out or to dig deeply?

Jung: It wouldn’t mean abandoning your commitment to morality and productivity, but it would mean an increased openness to feeling and instinct, and enlisting feeling and instinct to find meaningful direction for all your energy. That might feel indulgent to you at times, as if you are letting go of your commitments, but it is really about finding their rightful place. You aren’t abandoning your principles, you are finding the meaning behind them that you’ve lost.

Percy: I think I get it, but it’s still kind of murky.

Carl Jung on Perfection and Wholeness

Jung: Let me approach this differently. There is something deeper going on inside you than just a dissatisfied girlfriend and a noisy mind. And it’s not just about compensating any insecurity you might have, though there is some truth to that. But more importantly it’s about something inside that needs connection and expression.

Rather than you just trying to fill up the emptiness of an inferiority complex with your productivity and rules, perhaps part of you is actually trying to express something unique to you, but it’s getting hijacked by the ego that wants to be in charge and prove itself.

It’s as if a shipment of food destined for a starving village is stolen by terrorists and used to support their own violent ends.

You have a lot of energy for this, but it’s going into the wrong places.

I suspect that part of you wants to express and actualize something that cries for completion, but you put your energy into other projects, like correcting people and seeking respect by looking perfect. That’s what I meant earlier about falling into a pattern, as if you were a prophet or preacher.

You see, perfection used to mean wholeness. To perfect used to mean to complete something, to make it whole, not to perfect in your western sense of being precise and sanitized.

But you are not whole. You are divided.

Look at any flower. You’ll see that it is perfect in that it has actualized its plan, it has completed the expression of its nature. It’s not because you can measure its execution in exact millimeters. It created itself perfectly.

I’d suggest that instead of asking what caused your problem of perfectionism, we ask what your perfection and energy are for; what purpose they were originally intended for, and what purpose it has actually served.

Anything come to mind?

Percy: Not yet. But I can see why you’d ask.

Jung: We’ve been talking for thirty minutes, and you have yet to mention anything you’re passionate about other than perfection and production in very general terms. Those are only means, but you’ve made them the ends. You’ve gotten very good at sniffing out what’s wrong, but you never dig deeply into what’s right.

You’ve said nothing about what you find beautiful or inspiring. You’ve said nothing about what gives your life meaning. Those are the things that make us whole, or complete.

The urge to perfect, complete, produce and create can be compulsive in healthy and adaptive way, but many people become compulsive in an unhealthy way because they’ve forgotten the original goal, and instead they try to prove themselves and they just go in circles.

Imagine that you are driving through a traffic circle, the kind that has four exits, like the four points of a compass. Without knowing which direction you want to go in, you’ll keep going in circles for a long time. Sound familiar?

Percy: I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it’s true, I’m not sure all my corrections have amounted to much. They don’t seem to have a direction. It’s just an obsession I have.

The Mission: Percival Restores the Kingdom

Jung: I think you need a mission rather than an obsession. Your namesake, Percival, a talented and ambitious knight from King Arthur’s Round Table, had a mission. But, like you, he missed the turn-off to get there the first time because he was trying to be good rather than follow his instincts.

Percival’s mission was to heal the Grail King so that the barren kingdom would flourish again. To do so, Percival was supposed to ask him either, “What ails you?” or “Whom does the Holy Grail serve?”

The first question shows empathy for suffering, the second shows curiosity about what life is all for. Either one would have healed the king and restored the kingdom. Then he would have felt like he had really accomplished something. He would have felt whole.

Instead, because he had been told that it wasn’t appropriate for a knight to ask too many questions, he prioritized what he thought was “correct,” and he didn’t ask any questions. He had to wander for twenty years before he got another chance to heal the King and restore the kingdom.

Empathy and Curiosity

While in some ways you are very different from Percival, you’re both set on doing the Right Thing, but end up doing the wrong thing. Perhaps worse, you assume you know what the right thing is. So you don’t ask any questions. And, cut off from your instinct and feeling you have no real direction. You have no sense of what or who the perfection and productivity are meant to serve. Add a lack of curiosity and you’re going in circles.

What do you think it feels like to others when you tell them what to do?

Percy: Does it really matter? The real issue isn’t how we feel, but how we act.

Jung: Your perfection complex is quite stubborn! I don’t hear much empathy or connection to your feeling side in that reply. You are split off from it and that leaves you longing for something, but you don’t know what. It’s hard to get along with people when you don’t have empathy. And it’s hard to find your direction. Direction comes from feeling, not from reason.

Janus Lives Out Percy’s Feeling Side

I had suggested earlier that your girlfriend Janus was living something out for you. This is what it is. Feeling. Empathy. Direction. You won’t allow yourself to have feelings, so you have her feel things for you. This is why you feel better when she’s around and empty when she’s not. The threat of her absence was the only thing that was going to get you into therapy, look inside and dig deeply.

You said earlier today that you didn’t want to lose her. I can understand that and I empathize with it. But perhaps the more powerful motivation contained in that is that you don’t want to lose yourself, and you feel like you lose yourself when she’s not around. Right now you feel she completes you. But that won’t last for long. Eventually her spontaneity will drive you crazy….unless you change.

Meanwhile you want to turn her into something she’s not, something more “perfect” that satisfies you but doesn’t challenge you. You’ve latched onto the myth of Pygmalion. You think you can create another person out of your own will. If you could change her, and I hope you won’t, it would be a disaster for both of you.

Maybe this is just a coincidence, but the Greek God Janus could see in two directions, so he symbolized doorways and transitions. Her different perspective could serve as a doorway to a transition for you.

Thoroughness and False Confidence

And this brings me back to something else I am curious about. How do you know when you are right? You seem to assume that you’re usually right.

Percy: Other people just don’t think about this stuff as much as I do. I’m very reflective and meticulous.

Jung: You mean obsessive and compulsive.

Percy: I wouldn’t have put it that way. I would call it thorough, and that’s one reason I put so much stock in my way of doing things.

Jung: I can see that’s true about you, and it is commendable. But an excess of reflection and thoroughness does not guarantee correctness. Did it ever occur to you that it’s possible to be too thorough? If one tablet of acetaminophen is good for you, 12 tablets are not better. They could destroy your liver.

How do you know how many pills to take? How many does it take to feel better? If you don’t know what makes you feel better, you will continue to go in circles.

Your reflection and meticulousness may actually take you off course rather than get you where you want to go. It can also make you self-righteous and closed-minded rather than empathic and curious.

If you want to be right, don’t be so sure. Certainty is more closely aligned with error; curiosity is more closely aligned with truth.

Carl Jung: Restoring the Kingdom

You said earlier in the session that everything always seems wrong to you. What if the real point is not that the world is off, everyone knows that, but that there is something off inside of you, a split that needs to be repaired? A kingdom that needs to be restored? You are cut off from your humble dachshund, and you are just wandering around in critical circles because you’ve lost empathy, curiosity and a sense of direction. You’re no longer digging deeply.

Percy: Well, you may be right, but I was thinking I just needed a little tweaking rather than an overhaul.  This is not what I expected.

Jung: If it were, your trip up from Geneva to Zurich would have been a complete waste. The best answer is seldom what we expected.

In the long run it comes down to attitude, especially your attitude toward your inner life, your unconscious and your dreams. Until now your attitude has been very closed—closed toward yourself, toward others and toward new ideas. Your ego has wanted to see itself as the prophet with all the answers. Everything goes out and nothing comes in. That’s a pattern others have fallen into and climbed out of as well.

The main question I want to leave you with today is, “Who, or what, does your perfectionism serve?” If it isn’t to prove yourself, what is it for?

Should you decide you want to change, I am at your disposal.