Behavior: Fearing the Mask May Slip

IP, a neurosis that affects only those who have achieved success, is a peculiar blend of insecurities. Its victims privately denigrate their professional abilities and think that their success is the result of superficial qualities like good looks or charm. Some are workaholics who believe that they have made it only because they work harder than others. Most have difficulty accepting compliments. What distinguishes IP victims from other shy or insecure people is an enormous drive to achieve worldly position coupled with an inability to enjoy acclaim. Most strivers experience anxiety when faced with a difficult challenge, but usually feel better after meeting it. Not the impostor. Says Clance: "The person who thinks he is an impostor feels worse: he believes he is only perpetrating a fraud."

These feelings are not restricted to the workplace. Impostors include working mothers who feel inadequate at home as well as on the job, attractive executives who secretly believe that under those fashionable clothes they are still as fat as they were at 13, and innumerable men and women who fear that their friends would desert them if only they knew. In Harvey's book, Virgil, 67, a self-made millionaire in Beverly Hills, remembers his humble beginnings when he walks into his exclusive club and wonders when the others will realize that he does not belong there.

Many impostors develop these fears after early successes. When Eleanor, a nuclear engineer cited by Clance, became one of the first women to obtain a top position in her field, she refused to accept her accomplishments. "I'm not very bright at all," she says. "I don't really belong here."

Readers of these books may wonder why anyone should care about the chief executives and movie stars who get sweaty palms every time they undertake a new task. The answer, according to Clance and Harvey, is that IP fears can trigger illness and debilitating emotional trauma in sufferers, and cause additional problems for others who depend upon them. Consider, for example, the hyped-up physician who told Clance about his long battle to keep his fears under control. "It was wearing me out pretending to be a doctor," he confided. He eventually realized that his unfounded obsession with imminent failure had driven him to nervous exhaustion, adversely affecting his marriage and his friendships.

Occasionally, IP victims devise make-shift methods for coping with their problems. One high-priced middle-age executive believes deep down that he is a child masquerading as an adult. His solution: after an arduous day of pretending to be a grownup, he rushes home to eat Popsicles and play video games. It works for him, but for most IP sufferers Clance and Harvey would prescribe more standard measures: therapy, self-help groups and understanding friends. Clance also suggests that her patients remember a useful observation of W. Somerset Maugham's: "Only a mediocre person is always at his best." --By Janice Castro. Reported by Leslie Cauley/Atlanta and Marcia Gauger/New York