or failure. Those who are at risk for developing a complex include people who: show signs of low self-esteem or self-worth or have low status in their peer group. They may also display symptoms similar to depression. Children reared in households where the parents are perceived as having overbearing expectations may also develop an inferiority complex. According to Adler, "Everyone (...) has a feeling of inferiority. But the feeling of inferiority is not a disease; it is rather a stimulant to healthy, normal striving and development. It becomes a pathological condition only when the sense of inadequacy overwhelms the individual and, far from stimulating them to useful activity, makes them depressed and incapable of development." Classifications Classical Adlerian psychology makes a distinction between primary and secondary inferiority feelings. A primary inferiority feeling is said to be rooted in the young child's original experience of weakness, helplessness and dependency, where there is also a lack of parental acceptance and affection, or an actual constitutional weakness. It can then be intensified by comparisons to siblings, romantic partners, and adults. A secondary inferiority feeling relates to an adult's experience of being unable to reach a subconscious, reassuring fictional final goal of subjective security and success to compensate for the inferiority feelings. The perceived distance from that reassuring goal would lead to a negative/depressed feeling that could then prompt the recall of the original inferiority feeling; this composite of inferiority feelings, i.e. the original feeling recalled due to the secondary feeling, could be experienced as overwhelming. The reassuring goal invented to relieve the original, primary feeling of inferiority (which actually causes the secondary feeling of inferiority) is the "catch-22" of this dilemma. Effects When an inferiority complex is in full effect, it may impact the performance of an individual as well as impact an individual's self-esteem. Unconscious psychological and emotional processes can inhibit a student's ability to receive and understand new information in addition to an excessive guardedness that results from an inability to accept or understand one's own subconscious feelings of inferiority. In his PhD dissertation, Guy Hutt found that in students who display difficulty with math classes, the subject can become associated with a psychological inferiority complex, low motivation and self-efficacy, poor self-directed learning strategies, and feelings of being unsafe or anxious. In the mental health treatment population, this complex sometimes overlaps in patients with other disorders such as certain types of