Pseudocompetence comes from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 root "ψευδο-", pseudo- and competence, the ability to perform a task or job. Petrūska Clarkson coined the term Achilles syndrome in her 1994 book The Achilles Syndrome where she focuses on the story of Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

 as an allusion to the hero's lack of internal competence with battle, love, and childhood. For modern people, the term refers to a psychological syndrome where a person may externally perform competently, however, does not internally believe they are competent for the task, job, position, or activity.

Pseudocompetent people have generally either become unconsciously incompetent or skipped over the basics of a particular field. This disruption in the natural learning cycle

Learning cycle

The learning cycle is a research-supported method for education, particularly in science. The learning cycle has five overlapping phases:# Engage: in which a student's interest is captured and the topic is established....

, coupled with the external expectation of competence, as described by Clarkson, can create a scenario where the person lacks the internal support to feel competent.

Identification

These symptoms are the building blocks of pseudocompetence and usually will never be visible to others:

1. A mismatch between externally assessed competence or qualification and internally experienced competence or capability, leading to feelings of I'm a fraud.
2. Inappropriate anxiety or panic in anticipation of doing the relevant task.
3. Inappropriate strain or exhaustion after the task.
4. Relief instead of satisfaction on completion of a task.
5. Inability to carry over any sense of achievement to the next situation.
6. A recurrent conscious or unconscious fear of being found out, and of shame and humiliation.
7. A longing to tell others about the discomfort but having a fear of being called weak or unstable.

Natural learning cycle

The natural learning cycle can be broken down into four levels with regards to competence. Both children and adults follow these four levels and often once passing the last level, unconscious competent, must relearn the basics. A pseudocompetent person will have a difficult time regressing in a natural and healthy way so that they may learn what was skipped.

1. Unconscious incompetence — an infant unaware of what they cannot do
2. Conscious incompetence — a child who is aware of what others can do, and that they cannot do the same
3. Conscious competence — a person who has become competent, such as a driver that recently mastered driving
4. Unconscious competence — a person who has become skillful to a level where they can perform unconsciously

Childhood

Children, in addition to adults, have a natural desire to acquire knowledge, make meaning of the world around them, and to become competent. Many aspects of the syndrome can be shaped by shame and humiliation. Clarkson describes this phenomenon as the desire for knowledge gone wrong. A great expectation by parents or teachers to have competency without regard to internal belief in aptitude, teaches children that if they have a competency issue, it should not be brought up. This becomes a pseudocompetence problem when a child explains to his teacher that he is not prepared for an exam and the teacher reassures the student that because he did well on previous exams, he will perform well again. In some cases the child may perform above expectations, providing a sense of fraudulent competence.

Often pseudocompetence is followed by early success where a child may have performed to such a high degree that their parents or teachers force the child to gloss over or completely skip the fundamentals of a subject. Similar to Achilles, who was forced to wear girl's clothing as subterfuge by his mother for protection, children who were coerced into pretending, lying, or deceiving others regularly, tend to become pseudocompetent. Many children are brought up believing that love and worth come from doing, instead of being. It has become a superstition among young folk that by believing in failure and passing an exam, they have somehow staved off being found out as a fraud or incompetent person. Such children become pseudocompetent adults, believing that they cannot be valued unless they perform competently.

Workplace

Humans have a constant and relentless need for efficacy and competency in the world. Work is the main method for a person to gain a sense of competence. Despite success, pseudocompetent people confess that they must endure anxiety, stress, and exhaustion because of their internal belief of fraudulence in the workplace. Organizations contribute to pseudocompetency by mistaking competency as giving an acceptably polished presentation. In such organizations, competence has morphed into the ability to hide the fear and avoid situations where their competency may be judged. "That can manifest itself as feelings of fraudulence when people are calling you a "guru" or "expert" while you're internally overwhelmed by the ever-expanding volumes of things you're learning that you don't know." Top computer programmers sometimes feel "I'm a phony" because of the high amounts of continuous learning required in the profession.

Creating an impression has become the most important goal in the workplace for many people, creating a scenario where a pseudocompetent person feels stuck by their inadequacies and trapped from asking for help by their subordinates, peers, or bosses. When a pseudocompetent person does not understand an event or activity in the workplace, the notion that they are expected to know forces that person to take morsels of facts and construct a reality separate from actuality. This phenomenon may become widespread throughout the organization, changing the workers into gossips who distort the truth into their reality because of fear of being found incompetent.

Love and sexuality

Sexuality, specifically in the American and European cultures, is widely regarded as something where the person should be naturally competent. Studies have found that despite the public appearance of perfection, gracefulness, and competence portrayed by media and society, 70% of women have not mastered sexuality. Ask a man if he is willing to publicly admit his shortcomings in sexuality and an overwhelming majority would not. Discrepancies between the great expectations of society and one's actual sexual ability or knowledge has created a cultural and societal pseudocompetence.