From Self-Demand to Self-Efficacy: A Relational Critique of Suffering in Contemporary Academia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70577/asce.v4i4.465Keywords:
Maladaptive perfectionism; Self-efficacy; Academic excellence; Self-demand; Resilient optimalism.Abstract
Introduction: This article proposes a systemic-relational reading of maladaptive academic perfectionism as an internalized relational script. Objective: To demonstrate how this propensity toward perfectionism is shaped by family and institutional ecologies in which belonging is primarily achieved through performance rather than through reciprocal bonds of affection.
Methods: Through the hermeneutic analysis of three clinical vignettes (Teresa, Octavio, and the couple formed by Clara and Vicente), the study explores the psychic, interactional, and contextual consequences of chronic self-demand, contrasting it with the unfolding of a situated, flexible, and sustainable self-efficacy. Results and Discussion: The article argues that ideals of academic excellence, when operating under neoliberal logics of unlimited productivity, generate configurations of emotional self-exploitation, deterioration of intimate bonds, and subjective dysregulation. It introduces the notion of resilient optimalism as a clinical and political alternative that enables the restoration of less sacrificial forms of relationality. Conclusion: It contends that these trajectories cannot be understood without considering the sociocultural conditions that produce, naturalize, and perpetuate academic and personal distress.
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