The Psychology of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the key to man's motivation—by virtue either of its presence or of its absence. And perhaps the most eloquent tes ...

Chapter Nine— Pathological Anxiety: 9. Pathological Anxiety: A Crisis of Self-Esteem The Problem of Anxiety There is no object o ...

Pathological anxiety differs, not only from those rationally warranted fears afflicting the world at large, but from the ordinar ...

and feeling only the exhilaration incident to a good digestion, when suddenly—in a lightning-flash as it were—"fear came upon me ...

comes too often; who feel a constantly pressing need to be amusing and to entertain; who flee to too many movies they have no de ...

at existence as such—as thought implying that to be, is to be in mortal danger. The anxious person feels, as an intrinsic compon ...

to an issue of perspective: I use the term "ego" to designate man's power of awareness as he experiences it. Any threat to a man ...

any painful aspect of existence, he may gain a momentary relief, but the betrayal of his cognitive development remains real—as s ...

The writings of Existentialists and certain religionists, who suggest the contrary, necessitate this emphasis. A state of chroni ...

ter. Whether the moral values a man accepts are rational or irrational, man cannot escape the knowledge that, in order to deal w ...

more demanding than his present position, which offers him security and protection for his mediocrity. He evades and represses t ...

a more "liberal" attitude toward sex, in order to "belong," i.e., to be accepted by her "peer group." After a few experimental e ...

But the wish is savagely thrust from his mind—along with a sudden burst of hostility toward his wife which he would never have a ...

the declaration that this may have been true in the Victorian age, but in our day the source of anxiety is the emergence of host ...

may be repressed. But there is another reason why the intensity of the guilt may not correspond to the intensity of the anxiety. ...

tices tend to be self-perpetuating. The anxiety engendered by such policies encourages evasion and repression as defenses agains ...

concerned with depression here only insofar as it is such a defense.) Depression, like anxiety, can be normal or pathological. A ...

man, rightly or wrongly, accepts certain moral standards or value-imperatives as essential criteria of his personal worth—and ye ...

Now a concluding word about the biological utility of anxiety and guilt. Anxiety and guilt are painful, and disruptive of clear, ...

Chapter Ten— 10. Social Metaphysics The Nature and Source of Social Metaphysics Entailed by the process of achieving self-esteem ...