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Elaine >to Gary + David  Self Esteem 12

Gary and David

I would be interested in your responses to this definition of self-esteem --from Nathaniel Branden, The Disowned Self - 1972

Elaine
 
CHAPTER 3:    Self-Acceptance and Self-Awareness
 
Self-esteem has two interrelated aspects: a sense of personal efficacy and a sense of personal worth. It is the conviction that one is competent to live and worthy of living. The conviction that one is competent to live means: confidence in the functioning of one's mind; confidence in one's ability to understand and judge the facts of reality (within the sphere of one's interests and needs); intellectual self-reliance. The conviction that one is worthy of living means- an affirmative attitude toward one's right to live and to be happy; a self-respect derived from the conviction that one practices the virtues one's life and happiness require.
 
 Self-esteem is a basic need of man, a cardinal requirement of his mental health and psychological well-being. There is no value judgment more important to man than the estimate he passes on himself. This estimate is ordinarily experienced by him, not in the form of a conscious, verbalized judgment, but in the form of a feeling, a feeling that can be hard to isolate and identify because he experiences it constantly: it is part of every other feeling. It is involved in his every emotional response.
 
An emotion is the product of an evaluation: it reflects an appraisal of the beneficial or harmful raelationship of some aspect of reality to oneself. Thus, a man's view of himself is necessarily implicit in all his value-responses. Any judgment entailing the issue, "Is this for me or against me?" entails a view of the "me" involved.  His self-evaluation is an omnipresent factor in man's psychology

 

 

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