Psychologists Thomas Kern and Andrew Hill define perfectionism as " an irrational desire to achieve, along with being overly critical of one's self and others" .
It's just that we may, without noticing, have taken the question somewhere else - and very often, to particularly harsh modern figure of authority: media and social media.
The authors say that, particularly in Europe and North America, the young now refuse to admire anyone; that we are living in a world too well informed, too curious and critical for hero worship.