View Single Post
 
Old Mar 26, 2005, 10:14 PM
Etienne Etienne is offline
New Member
 
Member Since: Mar 2005
Posts: 5
Hmm.. it does work for me.

Here's the first part of it:
</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Overcoming Self-Esteem
and Psychotherapy

From the book Science Shams & Bible Bloopers



Copyright, 2000, by David Mills
millsdavid@hotmail.com

Thirty years ago, when a person complained of depression or unhappiness, helpful friends or therapists might have offered the following counsel:

"Don't dwell on your own misfortune. Try instead to become creatively absorbed into outside interests and external activities. Stop obsessively contemplating your own navel. Develop rewarding interpersonal relationships. Get your mind off yourself. If you merely focus attention elsewhere, then your self-centered emotional problems will die of neglect."

Today, however, the same individual, suffering the same depression or unhappiness, would likely hear radically different -- and quite contradictory -- suggestion and guidance, such as this:

"Stop worrying about other people. Try instead to build up your own sense of self-worth. Take pride in yourself! Work toward elevating your own self-respect and enhancing your self-image. Your feelings of unhappiness and depression will surely evaporate if you only esteem yourself more highly!"

Clearly, something monumental has changed in popular advice given the forlorn. Instead of espousing, as we did previously, that mental health is realized through lucid interpretation and interaction with the external world, we now seem preoccupied with the wholly internal effort to elevate our own self-appraisal. Forget our former effort to objectively perceive the empirical universe; today we simply want to feel good about ourselves. It has become irrelevant whether an individual's critical reasoning accurately maps external reality. All that matters is his internal self-image.

Because of this shift in popular emphasis -- from external preoccupation to internal self-contemplation -- we find our libraries and bookstores stacked with radically different self-help texts from those published a few decades ago. Each new volume peddles a "breakthrough technique" or "revolutionary method" for conquering man's ever-present doubts about his "true" value. Best-selling books, such as I'm OK, You're OK, and its many clones, have sought to instill within the doubtful individual a belief that, although he may not be perfect, he is at least okay -- and can thus bestow upon himself a modest allotment of self-respect and happiness.

Yet, despite the wide distribution of such popular texts, and despite our tireless efforts to build within ourselves and our children a sense of self-worth, it seems, today, that the average person is as confused as ever (perhaps more so!) about his so-called "self-value." Our lofty sermons deifying self-esteem have produced few if any tangible results. In practical terms, the average person doesn't know what to believe about himself nor how he is supposed to establish such a "positive self-image." The entire concept of "personal worth" has become hopelessly ill-defined and philosophically empty.

In this chapter, I shall specifically detail why our over-hyped promotion of "self-esteem" has done demonstrably more harm than good, and why the prudent individual will resist the arrogant and childish temptation to "esteem" himself. Put another way, we shall learn why an individual would enjoy increased emotional stability and deeper contentment, and why he would suffer far less anxiety and inhibition by completely abandoning his drive for self-esteem.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

If you can't manage to make the link work, I can send you the article via e-mail.