Does Criticism Do More Harm Than Good to People?

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A Yoang Woman Who Fears Compliments

Marya, a brilliant graduate student in her early twenties who came for consultation, insisted that she could improve only with criticism. Her reasoning was that she knew the good qualities but that she did not know the bad ones. To have more knowledge of her negative qualities, she believed,would add to her self-understanding and thus enable her to see herself more completely. Marya, in effect, refused to acknowledge and to understand her strengths. She had assembled detailed lists of her negative qualities which she used daily to support an extremely negative view of herself . But they were either exaggerated or unreal.
Despite her attractiveness to others, she convinced herself that she was ugly. When her family bought her new and well-designed articles of clothing (she seldom. bought any herself ), she left them hanging in the closet for weeks before wearing them once. When someone complimented her on what she wore and asked whether it was new, she could honestly answer no. She did not "deserve" to wear new clothes. She could not bear the pain of hearing compliments, of seeing herself as intelIigent, pretty, or worthwhile.

As a child, Marya had received little or no criticism from her parents. She was prized by them. Their major disappointment in her apparently was that she often rejected their overtures of kindness and appreciation, not in anger but in embarrassment, as though she were undeserving. This seemingly mild-mannered young woman, exceptionally courteous and considerate to others, held onto her own negative selfjudgment with tenacity. Finally, friends and interested faculty members quit acceding to her persuasive requests for criticism that they could not honestly give. Instead, they gently but firmly confronted her with her own blindness to what she truly was like.