a person were to think himself "stupid" or "insane," he would necessarily regard this as a devastating reflection on
his ability to deal with reality.
From the time that a child acquires the capacity for conceptual functioning, he becomes increasingly aware—
implicitly and sub-verbally—of his responsibility for regulating his mind's activity. To maintain the conceptual
level of awareness, he must generate directed mental effort. He acquires the ability to discriminate between a state
of mental focus and a state of mental fog—and to choose one state or the other.
Now let us consider the relevance of these facts to man's need of self-esteem.
Self-Confidence:
The Sense of Efficacy
Since reality confronts him with constant alternatives, since man must choose his goals and actions, his life and
happiness require that he be right—right in the conclusions he draws and the choices he makes. But he cannot step
outside the possibilities of his nature: he cannot demand or expect omniscience or infallibility. What he needs is
that which is within his power: the conviction that his method of choosing and of making decisions—i.e., his
characteristic manner of using his consciousness (his psycho-epistemology)—is right, right in principle,
appropriate to reality.
An organism whose consciousness functions automatically, faces no such problem: it cannot question the validity
of its own mental operations. But for man, whose consciousness is volitional, there can be no more urgent concern.
Man is the only living species able to reject, sabotage, and betray his own means of survival, his mind. He is the
only living species who must make himself competent to live—by the proper exercise of his rational faculty. It is
his primary responsibility as a living organism. How a man chooses to deal with this issue is, psychologically, the
most significant fact about him—because it lies at the very core of his being as a biological entity.
To the extent that a man is committed to cognition—to the extent that the primary goal regulating the functioning
of his consciousness is awareness, i.e., understanding—the mental operations