The inferiority complex is freely chosen rather than unconsciously suffered.

Evidence

But since the force of compulsion in my past is borrowed from my free, reflecting choice and from the very power which this choice has given itself, it is impossible to determine a priori the compelling power of a past. It is not only its content and the order of this content which my free choice decides; it is also the adherence of my past to my actuality. If within a fundamental perspective which we do not yet have to determine, one of my principal projects is to progress—i.e., to be always at any cost a little further advanced along a certain path than I was yesterday or an hour earlier, this progressive project involves in relation to my past a series of “uprootings.” The past—which now from the height of my progress I regard with a slightly scornful pity—is that which is strictly a passive object for moral evaluation and judgment. “How stupid I was then!” or “How wicked I was!” It exists only because I can dissociate myself from it. I no longer enter into it, nor do I any longer wish to enter into it. This is not, of course, because it ceases to exist, but it exists only as that self which I no longer am—i.e., that being which I have to be as the self which I am no longer. Its function is to be what I have chosen of myself in order to oppose myself to it, that which enables me to measure myself. Such a for-itself chooses itself therefore without solidarity with itself, which means not that it abolishes its past but that it posits its past so as not to be associated with it, exactly so as to affirm its total freedom (that which is past is a certain kind of engagement with respect to the past and a certain kind of tradition). On the other hand, there are other for-itselfs whose project implies the rejection of time and a narrow solidarity with the past. In their desire to find a solid ground these latter have, by contrast, chosen the past as that which they are, everything else being only an indefinite and unworthy flight from tradition. They have chosen at the start the refusal of flight; that is, the refusal to refuse. The past consequently has the function of requiring of them a fidelity. Thus we shall see that the former persons admit scornfully and easily to a mistake which they have made whereas the very admission will be impossible for the others without their deliberately changing their fundamental project; the latter will then employ all the bad faith in the world and all the subterfuges which they can invent in order to avoid breaking that faith in “what is” which constitutes an essential structure of their project. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1194 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

People will say that all these considerations are merely utopian because to “remake woman,” society would have had to have already made her really man’s equal; conservatives have never missed the chance to denounce this vicious circle in all analogous circumstances: yet history does not go round in circles. Without a doubt, if a caste is maintained in an inferior position, it remains inferior: but freedom can break the circle; let blacks vote and they become worthy of the vote; give woman responsibilities and she knows how to assume them; the fact is, one would not think of expecting gratuitous generosity from oppressors; but the revolt of the oppressed at times and changes in the privileged caste at other times create new situations; and this is how men, in their own interest, have been led to partially emancipate women: women need only pursue their rise, and the success they obtain encourages them; it seems most certain that they will sooner or later attain perfect economic and social equality, which will bring about an inner metamorphosis. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1979 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Chosen inferiority is not contentment but assumed rebellion and despair; Motives are freely constituted rather than psychologically forced.; Freedom can break the circle of imposed inferiority — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1979 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Motives are freely constituted rather than psychologically forced. #corroborates (0.90)
• The compulsion power of one’s past derives from free choice, not its content #corroborates (0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1194
• Freedom can break the circle of imposed inferiority #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1979
• Consciousness freely chooses itself as not being the Other. #corroborates (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 775
• Indifference is a chosen self-blindness, not an innocent lack of awareness #corroborates (0.80)
• The refusal to choose is itself a choice. #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 26