The person who suffers from this pathology does not live happy or conform to anything, because he always wants more. What happens when "wanting to be or have" reaches extreme limits?
Studying a career and receiving oneself, working on what has been studied, buying a car, a house, forming a family, going on vacation to the dreamed place, are some of the goals that many people pursue, but others with only that does not reach them. They seek economic power, and once obtained they want and want more.
"Ambition is the desire to possess or to be. In it one can privilege the desire to become 'someone' or to be like someone, where there is always an ideal. That ambition is experienced by the subject as a force that pushes towards a destiny that never rises in. This is how this push divides the subject and 'bursts' it is a drive that drags him to places where he can be dangerously out Of its own axis ",
defined the license Any Krieger, didacta member APA-Full Member IPA-coordinator of the chapter of investigation in psychoanalysis and current pathologies.
He also stressed that
"ambition seems to always go forward (of the subject), drags it, makes him want something more and his sense of emptiness becomes an absurd dissatisfaction.This definition illustrates why he always needs something More to the ambitious, to the point of making him compulsively ostentatious in his aims. "
Psychology distinguishes three types of ambition: healthy or normal ambition, unreasonable or pathological ambition, and lack of ambition.
Normal or healthy ambition: it is part of a coherent and structured vital project, with logical, acceptable and achievable goals. This ambition acts as a stimulus to achieve the purpose, is more or less intense, but always understandable.
The absence of ambition: it is not a pathological state in itself, but lacking goals to achieve, the subject does not set goals, is satisfied with what is and what has no question anything else. There are those who could justify this attitude by claiming that happiness is based on being content with what one is, but the ambitious can be and desire and strive for other goals.
The pathological ambition: it surpasses the limits of normality, there is an incessant eagerness to achieve more and more, generally power, wealth or fame. This desire can become an obsessive idea that dominates the life of the individual conditioning his general behavior and his relationship with others that deteriorates in a greater or lesser term. The one who undergoes this pathological ambition poses his life exclusively according to his objectives, and the rest of the activities and people are relegated to the background.
Is it the capitalist system that conditions us to become competitive, ambitious and corrupt people, or are we the ones who have created an economy in our image and likeness?
What comes before: the egg or the chicken? From the theses formulated by Lowenstein it is clear that in this case the egg is the hen. In other words, our inability to be happy has made us greedy, turning the world into a business that nobody wins and we all lose. And in parallel, the monetary system on which our existence is based hinders and hinders the ethics and generosity that nestle deep within each human heart.
But then, what is greed? Where does it come from? Where is it leading us? Etymologically it comes from the Latin cupiditas, which means "desire, passion", and is synonymous with "ambition" or "excessive eagerness." Thus, greed is the desire to desire more than you have, the ambition to want more than what has been achieved. Hence it does not matter what we do or what we have: greed never stops. He always wants more. It is insatiable by nature. It acts like a poison that corrodes our heart and blinds our understanding, causing us to lose sight of what we really need to build a balanced, happy and meaningful life.
Any Krieger, a psychologist and writer, concluded that
"when that ambition can be sublimated, in the desire to know, it is when man discovers and donates the most remarkable inventions." Let us not forget the darker side of this vice that manages to transform the ambitious This is how the ambitious marriage and covetousness that finally destroys it in its own fire is sealed in avarice. "