To Flett and Hewitt, the idea of perfectionism as a form of admirable striving is a dangerous misconception, one they have devoted three books and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers to overturning. “I can’t stand it when people talk about perfectionism as something positive,” Flett told me, as we sat at his kitchen table in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb where he has spent most of his life. “They don’t realize the deep human toll.” Hewitt, a clinical psychologist, has seen with his therapy patients how perfectionism can be “personally terrorizing for people, a debilitating state.” It’s driven not by aspiration but by fear, and by the conviction that perfection is the only “way of being secure and safe in the world.”journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter