I believe this is where the highly self-critical perspective has its roots. From the outside, it looks like a bunch of compliment baiting, but actually it seems to be a necessary. Without that intense scrutiny from yourself, how are you supposed to grow when you don't know what you did wrong?
This is also partially why some creatives stop making progress even if financially successful to a degree. They get enough fans, they make enough money, so they stop looking for things to nitpick and start blindly believing. See Rob Liefeld, who notoriously has received a lot of bad feedback about his work but way after he was successful in the 90s - to the point where he's gone on record saying he doesn't know why he's so "controversial".
But on the other hand, if at some point you become unable to respond (artistically) to your biting self-criticism, there's the danger of ceasing production entirely. Then five years go by.
Very true. It's very difficult when your self-criticism turns into self-hatred. It's the merging of identities, you can no longer separate yourself as a person from your creations.
There's this sense of clinging too tightly to your work that you never get far enough away from it to learn from it. It consumes you and leads right into that merging of identities concept.
This is also partially why some creatives stop making progress even if financially successful to a degree. They get enough fans, they make enough money, so they stop looking for things to nitpick and start blindly believing. See Rob Liefeld, who notoriously has received a lot of bad feedback about his work but way after he was successful in the 90s - to the point where he's gone on record saying he doesn't know why he's so "controversial".