On Being Sane in Insane Workplaces: The Victim Complex and the Rise of Corporate Mediocrity

In 1973, psychologist David Rosenhan published “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” a landmark experiment that revealed a chilling truth: once a system labels you as “insane,” everything you do thereafter is interpreted through that label. Perfectly sane people, when placed in psychiatric hospitals, were treated as ill because the system needed them to be.

Half a century later, we don’t need hospitals to see the same phenomenon play out. We just need offices.

Modern workplaces have become their own psychiatric wards, institutions that can no longer distinguish competence from dysfunction. Those who appear calm, rational, and demanding of excellence are labeled “difficult,” “elitist,” or “uncooperative.” Meanwhile, those who weaponize helplessness, self-pity, and mediocrity are celebrated for their “empathy,” “resilience,” and “team spirit.”

Welcome to the new professional asylum, where victimhood has replaced accountability, and mediocrity has learned to market itself.

The Cult of the Comfortably Mediocre

In my earlier essay published “Why Average Employees Believe They Run Your Company,” I explored how the comfortably mediocre, those neither incompetent nor exceptional, have mastered the art of corporate survival. They are predictable, risk-averse, and deeply skilled at optics management. They don’t lead innovation; they lead perception.

They are the ones sending midnight emails filled with buzzwords, chairing endless meetings, and preaching “collaboration” while ensuring nothing actually moves forward. In every organization, they form a quiet empire, stable, smiling, and profoundly resistant to change.

It’s not malice. It’s self-preservation. Mediocrity feels safe. Excellence, on the other hand, threatens to expose the system.

But there’s a new twist to this old script: the victim complex. In a culture obsessed with “emotional intelligence” and “safe spaces,” some employees have learned to use perceived suffering as a source of moral authority.

When things go wrong, they don’t take responsibility, they take center stage. Every missed deadline becomes a story of being “overworked.” Every critique becomes an “attack.” Every demand for accountability becomes “toxic leadership.”

It’s a brilliant defense mechanism: by portraying themselves as victims, they become untouchable. You can’t question their output without appearing cruel. You can’t challenge their mediocrity without being accused of lacking empathy.

In this twisted dynamic, the genuine doers—the sane ones—are gaslit into silence.

The Inversion of Sanity

Think back to Rosenhan’s experiment. Sane people admitted to psychiatric hospitals could do nothing to convince doctors they were sane. Their normal behavior was reinterpreted as “symptoms.”

The same inversion happens daily in modern organizations. High performers who challenge outdated systems are labeled as “abrasive.” Strategic thinkers who cut through noise are told they “lack empathy.” Meanwhile, those who complain the loudest about being “unheard” often control the entire conversation.

We’ve built workplaces that reward emotional theater over actual contribution. The more convincingly one performs exhaustion, fragility, or moral outrage, the more credibility they gain. In such an ecosystem, genuine competence becomes the real insanity.

The Bureaucratic Immune System

Every organization develops antibodies against what it perceives as a threat. In many companies, excellence is that threat. The “immune system” of mediocrity attacks through soft power, meetings, policy committees, emotional appeals, and vague complaints about “fit.”

The purpose isn’t to destroy outright, it’s to neutralize. To wear down the competent until they comply, leave, or become one of the comfortably mediocre themselves.

As in Rosenhan’s psychiatric wards, the system sustains itself by redefining sanity as deviance.

Empathy Without Accountability Is Institutional Decay

Empathy is a beautiful concept, until it’s weaponized. Many organizations mistake emotional indulgence for compassion. They validate every grievance, accommodate every narrative, and confuse sympathy with progress.

But empathy without accountability doesn’t heal workplaces—it hollows them out. It allows self-pity to masquerade as moral worth. It gives the victim complex room to grow unchecked.

Leaders must recognize this: compassion is not the same as capitulation. You can be kind and still demand excellence. You can listen without surrendering judgment.

So how do we bring sanity back to the workplace asylum?

Stop rewarding optics. Judge contribution, not performance theater. Late-night emails and LinkedIn humblebrags are not commitment, they’re camouflage.

Redefine empathy. Support your people, yes, but also challenge them. Growth requires friction.

De-pathologize dissent. Critique is not conflict. Those who question systems often understand them best.

Call out emotional manipulation. Being perpetually offended or exhausted is not a qualification for leadership.

Until we confront these truths, organizations will continue to mistake compliance for culture, and fragility for moral strength.

Rosenhan showed us that a system unable to tell the difference between sanity and insanity eventually loses its own credibility. The same is true of our workplaces. When self-pity outshines performance and mediocrity masquerades as mindfulness, the sane start to look mad simply for wanting results.

The challenge for modern leaders is not to build happier workplaces, but saner ones.

Because right now, too many offices look less like companies and more like well-decorated asylums where everyone’s polite, no one’s accountable, and the comfortably mediocre are running the ward.