…for trying to mask one’s feelings of not being equal to life’s tasks with brute intellect or surreal paradigms to suggest one is larger than life? Is it “depersonalization” or “intellectualization”?
I may be wrong but I don’t think either one of those terms fit 100%.
Here are the definitions:
Depersonalization is an ‘alteration’ in the perception or experience of the self so that one feels ‘detached’ from, and as if one is an ‘outside’ observer of, one’s mental processes or body.
Intellectualization is defined as concentrating on the intellectual components of the situations so as to distance oneself from the anxiety provoking emotions associated with the situations.
I think the word you want is “overcompensation”.
Sounds like delusions of grandeur