He knows, consciously or subconsciously, that he does not know what to do and that knowledge is required to
make decisions in the face of the countless alternatives that confront him every day of his life. But others seem to
know how to live and function, so the only way to exist, he feels, is to follow their lead and live by their
knowledge; they know—they will spare him the effort and the risk; they know—somehow they possess control of
that mysterious unknowable: reality.
He does not begin by choosing to be an intellectual dependent; he begins by failing to assume the responsibility of
thinking and judging on his own; then he is forced into the position of a dependent. He is led to shape his soul in
the image of a parasite inconceivable in any other living species: not a parasite of body, but of consciousness.
A man of self-esteem and sovereign consciousness deals with reality, with nature, with an objective universe of
facts; he holds his mind as his tool of survival and develops his ability to think. But the psycho-epistemological
dependent lives, not in a universe of facts, but in a universe of people; people, not facts, are his reality; people, not
reason, are his tool of survival. It is on them that his consciousness must focus; reality is reality-as-perceived-by-
them; it is they who he must understand or please or placate or deceive or maneuver or manipulate or obey. It is his
success at this task that becomes the gauge of his efficacy—of his competence at living.
Having alienated himself from objective reality, he has virtually no other standard of truth, rightness, or personal
worth. To grasp and successfully to satisfy the expectations, conditions, demands, terms, values of others, is
experienced by him as his deepest, most urgent need. The temporary diminution of his anxiety, which the approval
of others offers him, is his substitute for self-esteem.
This is the phenomenon that I designate as "Social Metaphysics."
"Metaphysics" is one's view of the nature of reality. To the psycho-epistemological dependent, reality (for all
practical purposes) is people: in his mind, in his thinking, in the automatic connections of his consciousness, people
occupy the place which, in the mind of a rational man, is occupied by reality.
Social metaphysics is the psychological syndrome that characterizes a person who holds the minds of other men,
not objective reality, as his ultimate psycho-epistemological frame of reference.