Remember the old "Bobo the Clown" inflatable punching bag with the big red nose that squeaked when you hit it, and that had something heavy in the bottom so it always came back up for more? Now imagine that clown with a slow leak, so that there has to be a continuous re-inflation process going on to keep it up. If you do, you have some idea of how the "Claim to Fame" (CF) operates. They are the "perennial adolescent" who are "one note" status-freaks whose chant is, "Wait till they hear about THIS!". They are always trying to prove their right to exist by making a big impression.
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
Their parents were worth-anxious status-addicts who constantly compared themselves and their kids to others and to external status standards. For whatever reason, this individual became the family rejectee who received many messages to the effect that they don't measure up or belong. They were heavily discounted and denigrated for this, because it was a matter of such overwhelming importance to the family.
It seemed that no matter what they did, it was never good enough, or it was never as good as Johnny's or Joanie's. That is, that's the way it was until they found their One Note, their "specialty". Then they began to experience some acceptance, validation and relief from the rejection. So they traded their personhood for the recognition and status arising from their One Note.
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
The result of this experiential history is an individual who is deeply worth-anxious and who fears that they simply don't have what it takes to be fully human. They are also very afraid of looking within for what is in there, and they are self-avoidant "Pandora-anxious" with regard to self-release. In addition, they have a million "leaks" in their ego due to the trillions of stilettos that they got from their family, leading to an ego deflation problem that could lead to their demise.
They therefore invest everything into keeping their recognition coming in as a compensation for their "constant slow leak", and as reassurance of their worth and significance. Attention, admiration and validation are an addiction to them. They have to have a constant "fix" or they go into "withdrawal symptoms" arising from their profound underlying depression and the feeling that they don't deserve to exist. Consequently, all their energy is directed to peer group, superior position individual, and higher status group acceptance, an input that must be more or less continuous.
"Claim to Fames" are in effect perennial adolescents who remain emotionally dependent on their parents. They are never able to break away from their parents and they remain immature, and they try to stay forever young. They can't give, having always received, and they are jealously possessive. They are self-preoccupied and narcissistic due to all the self-wounds they received, and they over-identify with hero figures as an inflation strategy.
They feel deeply insecure, inadequate, emotionally weak and infantile, which adds up to worthless and impotent. They therefore reaction formate, and they compete for power and prestige, and they are status symbol addicts. They are always restlessly on the make for another challenge-chance to "prove" themselves and to win kudos.
The males have the "small penis syndrome", and they evaluate every-one by their money, prestige and/or macho power and masculine possessions. They show off their "phallic trophy" wife-possession, and of course they are paranoically fearful of losing her to the competition, and jealous battering often results.
"Claim to Fame's" seek the "God Housekeeping Seal of Approval" -- the externally recognized performance, attainment and achievement. "How am I doing in comparison to those better than me?" is their big question. What the standards are and who is to be impressed in their "imaginary audience" is very vague to them. They just want to make a big "splash" -- to demonstrate that they have significance, importance and deservingness of recognition.
They feel that only by super-performance can they get the only stroke they can use to survive -- recognition as validation of the right to live. They are compulsive comparison-trippers, and relative standing is everything to them. They are approval and applause-addicts who go for reputation , not necessarily immediate impact. "What will people think of me?" is their overriding consideration.
So they enter a specialty such as music, mountain climbing, clothes design or "fashion plate" dressing, intellectual attainment, or whatever. They then take this "magnificent obsession" to a life-and-death issue of continuously needing proof of "who is the best of them all?". Being forgotten, surpassed, obsolete, ignored, rejected, considered unimportant is the total terror that drives their whole life. Ostracism or obscurity would produce "death by marasmus" (failure to thrive; a gradual wasting away of the body) due to emotional starvation.
They devote all of their resources to being "The Best", and they fill their life with their all-consuming passion activity for the status-providing outcomes involved. They are in effect status-addicts, and they base their entire identity on their "magnificent obsession". Because of the underlying right-to-exist worth-anxiety involved, self-immolation (a deliberate and willing sacrifice of oneself often by fire) in one way or another is an ever-present possibility as the ultimate claim to fame -- going out in a "blaze of gore".
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
"Claim to Fame's" are achievement-freaks to the max, and they are also into one-upmanship with a vengeance. (If something someone does is one-upmanship, they are trying to make other people admire them by doing it in a better or more clever way than someone else.) They lord it over everyone, and their entire experience and conversation is devoted to their accomplishments in their status-specialty. They also boast about their equipment and accoutrements for the specialty. Their social interface comes across as, "Why don't YOU have it together like I do?", and it has the unfortunate effect of intense narcissism and masturbation in public. It drives people away in droves, which only hugely fuels their delusion of worthlessness and their delirium for status-compensation.
They are constantly pushing themselves in their One Note, not so much for the inherent experience as for the "Wait till they find out about THIS one!" imaginary audience reaction. They are always trying for the low-output, high quantity survival-guaranteeing recognition. They are gauche-gross (gauche: graceless, unpolished, lacking social polish) grandiose frontiers -- "If you can't make it, fake it!" -- in a form but not substance lifestyle. "Keeping up with (or better, surpassing) the Jones" is their whole schtick.
"Claim to Fames" go for the top, and their "magnificent obsession" is chosen on the basis of its potentiality for allowing them to be the best or at least being really impressive. They live for the moments when they "bag a peak" or "score a coup", so they can go brag about it, and they devote almost all their energies to honing their capabilities so they can do just that. They constantly boast about their finest, hardest, purest, fastest, etc., and about the "look on their faces when...". The trouble is that their one-pointed total devotion to their specialty creates an incredibly self-limiting super-specialist as their whole identity and beingness.
They are "monomaniacs" about their specialty, and they are completely immersed in its finer points at all times. They are always talking about the field, with its ups and downs, esoteric equipment, concepts and jargon, the famous names in the field, its principles of operation, the competitions, big events, etc. They risk their life, ruin their family, blow money, waste their time, hang out with cronies in the field, etc., all for the all-consuming passion of worth-validation for the moment. In order to do all this, they have to take on some of the aspects of cult membership in their functioning. And advice or admonitions to broaden themselves or to consider alternative lifestyles are experienced as assaults and moral attacks.
They are utterly incapable of sustained intimacy, and they can only be potent through the process of the pursuit. They can't form intimacy, and they use their intimates as status symbols. They are so prestige-conscious that they deliberately set out to get a prestige symbol spouse via deception -- pretending to be what they aren't. They feel unlovable and that they are a nothing, so they seek to compensate for it with an impressive spouse, family and spouse's family, all for the sense of belonging, nothing more.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
Intervention centers around worth-validation. It requires the development of a therapeutic relationship that accepts them for who they are, not for what they do, have done, or will do, nor is it for what they possess, what they know or who they know. At first, the therapist has to unconditionally accept all the "BS" that the "Claim to Fame" puts out, which will, of course, center around their One Note.
But over time, s/he can ask them for small forays into other areas of life and personhood, little "stretch-risks" out of their specialty. As the "Claim to Fame" develops trust in the therapist, and a little in themselves as a result, some preliminary insight-inductions, interpretations and suggestions can be introduced.
After this becomes the main focus of the intervention, the delusion of worthlessness can be worked on with feedback and realistic recognition. Over time, the small "stretch-risks" can gradually extended out of the therapeutic relationship and into the real world. The purpose is to return their personhood to them, and to allow them to move out of their "hung up in acceptance" trap. A very good way to sort of cap the whole process off is to install them into a high feedback social service such as working with retarded kids.
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
They have been an achieve-aholic all their life to feed the gaping maw of their desperate sense of worthlessness. But in the process, they have risen to the top echelons of their specialty, which gave them the "learning the ropes" training for accomplishment. And when they have healed their narcissistic wound, they can use their experiences and skills in a highly capable and earned prestigeful self-validating manner in their specialty and in other arenas as well. They can even "pass it on" in a mentoring capacity later.
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