At the first lecture of Get Over Yourself by Bruxy Cavey an interesting book by J. M. Twenge and W. K. Campbell entitled The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in an Age of Entitlement was discussed.

In summary, Cavey, while he acknowledged there were people who had self-destructive perceptions of themselves, argued that “self-love” and “self-affirmation” have become a panacea of our generation for almost all psychological ailments. Instead promoting this, in his words we should:

“…renounce the pop-culture pursuit of self-love. Forget trying to love yourself more. In fact, most of us would benefit from thinking about ourselves less, period. Start focusing on the needs and desires of others, especially those people who are on the margins of social circles.”

In response to this, I would ask:

  • Is it true that our generation is overly focused on ourselves?
  • If we are, is it a bad thing?

On reflection I agree with Cavey’s basic point, building self-esteem seems to be the remedy for all of our social ills and the centre piece of education. It is generally linked to self-confidence. If I convince myself that I am able to leap a tall building at a single bound, the hope is that in practice that self-confidence (it is more properly called a self-delusion) will enable me to clear a moderate-sized fence. I think this kind of self-programing is a self-administered psychological placedo.

It also leads to pervasive self-delusion. The greatest lies are often the lies we tell ourselves. This then is the conundrum of Self-Esteem counseling. If my focus is to engender belief (whether the statement believed about myself is true or not) because the belief is thought to improve my performance whether athletically, intellectually, or socially then I’ve stopped believing things simply because they’re true. I think it is much better to try to be as honest with and about myself as possible and forgo whatever benefits arise from pretending I am better than I am.

Thanks for reading,

Peter