reality, can be achieved only by the consistent exercise of the one faculty that permits man to apprehend reality: his
reason.
Self-Esteem Versus Pseudo-Self-Esteem
To the extent that a person fails to attain self-esteem, the consequence is a feeling of anxiety, insecurity, self-doubt,
the sense of being unfit for reality, inadequate to existence. Anxiety is a psychological alarm-signal, warning of
danger to the organism (Chapter Nine).
In varying degrees of intensity, the experience of such anxiety is the fate of most human beings.
Most men never identify the importance of reason to their existence, they do not judge themselves by the standard
of devotion to rationality, and they are not aware of the issue of self-esteem in the terms discussed here. They are
aware only of a desperate desire to feel confident and in control, and to feel that they are good, good in some basic
way which they cannot name. But the cause of that formless fear and guilt which haunts their lives is a failure
which is psycho-epistemological, i.e., a failure in the proper use of their consciousness—a default on the
responsibility of reason. The anxiety they experience is part of the price they pay for that default.
Since self-esteem is a fundamental need of man's consciousness, since it is a need that cannot be bypassed, men
who fail to achieve self-esteem, or who fail to a significant degree, strive to fake it—to evade its lack and to seek
protection from their state of inner dread behind the barricade of a pseudo-self-esteem.
Pseudo-self-esteem, an irrational pretense at self-value, is a non-rational, self-protective device to diminish anxiety
and to provide a spurious sense of security—to assuage a need of authentic self-esteem while allowing the real
causes of its lack to be evaded.
A man's pseudo-self-esteem is maintained by two means, essentially: by evading, repression, rationalizing, and
otherwise denying ideas and feelings that could affect his self-appraisal adversely; and by seeking to derive his
sense of efficacy and worth from something other than rationality, some alternative value or virtue which he
experiences as less demanding or more easily attainable, such as "doing