Unless you work in a high-octane industry where The Wolf of Wall Street is treated like a role model, admitting that you’re a competitive person can feel a bit icky. Especially outside of the office – in friendships or family dynamics – being openly competitive is often seen as a character flaw. But as always, when a moral ideal becomes an unquestioned good, it’s worth asking how that ideal was formed.
Competition shapes a great deal of our social relations, particularly in capitalist societies where success is measured against others. From productivity to wealth, desirability and even wellness, we are often defined not by who we are, but by how we compare to those we’re closest too. We might think this is grotesque – and I do – but let’s not indulge in the fantasy that we’re somehow above it. We are all submerged in this system, and we’re all playing the game of comparison more than we’d like to admit.
Even the thought ‘well, I’m not doing that’ reveals the mechanism at play: you’ve just compared yourself to the idea and decided you’re coming out on top. If we were truly outside it, we’d likely be hiding somewhere, paralysed by anxiety – such is the depressingly grounding force of these laws.
So, what is competition? According to evolutionary psychology, it’s a fundamental mechanism shaped by natural and sexual selection. Competition plays a key role in survival, reproduction and gene transmission. Individuals compete for limited resources, such as food, mates, status and territory, because those who are more successful are more likely to reproduce. Evolutionary psychologists also argue that cooperation and morality evolved alongside competition, as strategic tools to gain allies, build reputations and outcompete rivals in complex social environments. In this framework, competitive behaviours in career, relationships and social hierarchies are explained as adaptations to ancestral pressures.
Personally, I recoil from these theories. They often suggest that everything capitalist is ‘natural’, which we know it isn’t. If we turn instead to Freud who – ironically – most others recoil at but who entertains me, we find a more nuanced account. For Freud, competition is rooted in the narcissistic structure of the self – particularly in what he called the ego ideal. This ideal is formed through early relational dynamics, where others function as both mirrors and rivals in the child’s struggle for love, recognition and survival. In Group Psychology, Freud argues that individuals often compete for the love or approval of a leader. This libidinal competition paradoxically promotes group cohesion, as people identify with one another through their shared attachment to the same ideal figure. In Civilisation and Its Discontents, Freud elaborates on this, arguing that competition is necessary for cultural progress, but because of this it’s also a source of inner conflict, as the more ‘civilised’ we become, the more we must repress certain wishes and drives.
Lacan builds on Freud but adds some complexity. He suggests that this ideal self (the ego ideal) takes shape in what he called the mirror stage, when an infant sees its reflection and identifies with it. That mirror image seems whole – but the child, in reality, feels fragmented. This mismatch creates a sense of rivalry, a kind of imaginary competition with the image of the self we wish we were.
For Lacan, competition also emerges through desire. But for Lacan, we don’t desire directly; we desire through the eyes of the Other. We want what feels recognised, validated, valued. The catch? That object of desire is never quite reachable. And so, competition becomes a kind of endless struggle over what’s missing – over lack itself. Because of this absence at the centre, most of us play this game by pretending we’re not playing, often unsure of what we’re even after.
So in my eyes, when someone is openly competitive, what we recoil from isn’t the drive itself – our society practically demands it – but the fact that someone has had the audacity to make it visible. Saying ‘I want to be better than you’ breaks the social contract. You’re supposed to smile while you climb, and never admit you’re keeping score. Exposing that wish is like an actor suddenly turning to the audience and saying, ‘hi, I’m acting’.
In that sense, those who pretend not to care may actually be the most competitive of all – at least our tortured friends, the ones who name it, have the wherewithal to name it.
Written by Molly Fitz