REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

THE IMPOSTOR SYNDROME 89

And yet that very expectation brought out once again my emotional bond

to Hitler ... My feelings of pity for the fallen ruler were growing stronger

and stronger ... On the one hand there was sense of duty, oath of alle-

giance, loyalty, gratitude — on the other hand the bitterness at personal

tragedy and national disaster — both centered around one person: Hitler.

(Speer, 1970 , pp. 601 – 602)

It was many more years before Speer was able to come to terms with
the ambivalence of his personal feelings and to grasp the full extent of
Hitler ’ s imposture on the German people — years of self - enforced intro-
spection during the 20 years Speer served in Spandau jail:

August 24, 1960 ... Going over it all in Spandau, I have gradually under-

stood completely that the man I served was not a well - meaning tribune

of the masses, not the rebuilder of German grandeur, and also not the

failed conqueror of a vast European empire, but a pathological hater. The

people who loved him, the German greatness he always talked about,

the Reich he conjured up as a vision — all that ultimately meant nothing

to him. I can still recall the astonishment with which I read the fi nal sen-

tence of his testament. In the midst of an apocalyptic doom it attempted

to commit us all to a miserable hatred of the Jews. (Speer, 1976 , pp.

353 – 354)

The impostor: a character sketch

If we look at common themes among the various descriptions of
impostors so far and take into consideration other observations about
this type of person, we can now see that potential impostors come
from families in which there is often an ambience of shared deception,
lying, cheating, and make - believe. Appearance, rather than substance, is
what really counts. Relationships tend to be superfi cial; showmanship
is all - important. Such individuals possess what might be described as an
overstimulated or overburdened self (Kohut and Wolf, 1978 ). They have
never learned to moderate their grandiose self - images or idealized paren-
tal images. They want the world to treat them according to their ideals,
not according to their real achievements. The real and the imaginary
are not well integrated.
Some of these children appear to have become proxies of their
parents, entrusted with the mission of fulfi lling many of the parents ’
unrealistic hopes and wishes. Moreover, some parents may have uncon-
sciously encouraged amoral or antisocial behavior in their children
( Johnson and Szurek, 1952 ); forbidden desires may consequently be