The Myth of Self-Esteem: How Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever

304 Pages·2005·7.6 MB·English

by  Albert Ellis

ALBERT ELLIS

To Debbie Joffe, who has been of tremendous help in getting out this book.

Immense thanks!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION: Is Self-Esteem a Sickness?

1 Nathaniel Branden and Self-Esteem

2 Carl Rogers and Unconditional Positive Regard

3 Albert Ellis and Unconditional Self-Acceptance

4 Psychotherapy and the Value of a Human

5 REBT Diminishes Much of the Human Ego

6 Some Definitions of Conditional Self-Esteem and Unconditional Self-

Acceptance

7 The Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Esteem or Conditional Self-

Acceptance

8 The Proverbs of Solomon and Self-Esteem

9 Lao Tsu and the Philosophy of Humility, Moderation, and Unconditional

Acceptance

10 Jesus of Nazareth and Self-Esteem

11 Spinoza and Nietzsche and Self-Esteem

12 Soren Kierkegaard and Self-Esteem

13 Martin Buber and Self-and Other-Acceptance

14 Martin Heidegger and Self-Esteem

15 Jean-Paul Sartre and Self-Esteem

16 Paul Tillich and Unconditional Self-Acceptance and Unconditional Other-

Acceptance

17 Self-Esteem and the Practice of Tibetan Buddhism by the Dalai Lama,

Howard Cutler, and H. Gunaratana Manhathera

18 D. T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism and the Philosophy of Acceptance

19 Windy Dryden, Michael Neenan, and Paul Hauck on Unconditional

Acceptance

20 Self-Esteem and Self-Acceptance in the Writings of Aaron Beck, David

Bums, and William Glasser

21 Stephen Hayes and Other Cognitive Behavior Therapists Who Endorse

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

22 Existential Anxiety and How to Defeat It with the Courage to Be

23 Taking the Road Less Traveled to Unconditional Self-Acceptance

24 Specific Thinking, Plotting, Planning, and Scheming Techniques of

Achieving Unconditional Self-Acceptance

25 Emotive-Evocative and Experiential Exercises for Achieving Unconditional

Self-Acceptance

26 Behavioral Exercises for Achieving Unconditional Self-Acceptance

27 Summary and Conclusion

Appendix 1: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy for Beginners

Appendix 2: The Role of Irrational Beliefs in Perfectionism

Appendix 3: Showing People that They Are Not Worthless Individuals

Appendix 4: Comments on David Mills's "Overcoming Self-Esteem"

Appendix 5: Intellectual Fascism

Selected References

About the Author

Index

To Kevin Everett Fitzmaurice, Emmett Velten, James McMahon, and Shawn
Blau, who read this book in manuscript, made valuable contributions, but are of
course not responsible for any of its contents, and to Tim Runion, who did a fine
word-processing and compiling job.

s self-esteem a sickness? That's according to the way you define it. In

the usual way it is defined by people and by psychologists, I'd say that it is
probably the greatest emotional disturbance known to man and woman: Even
greater than hating other people, which seems somewhat worse, but is perhaps a
little better.

Why does hating and damning other people seem worse than self-esteem,

which almost always leads to self-hatred? Well, it obviously results in fighting,
acting against, war, and genocide. Pretty dramatic! While self-hatred produces
more subtle resultslike despising yourself but not necessarily committing
suicide. Living with your self-lambasting.

Let me spend some time trying to clearly define self-esteem and self-

disesteem. This won't be easy, since definitions have been vague and
overlapping for the past century. But for the purposes of this book, here goes!

Self-esteem: You rate your self, your being, your personality, your essence,

your totality, in terms of two main goals: (1) Your achieving success or
effectiveness in your accomplishments. Your school, your work, your projects.
When you succeed in getting what you want (and avoiding what you don't want),
you say that is good. Great! But you also rate yourself and say, "I am a good
person for succeeding!" When you fail to satisfy your achievement goals, you
say, "That is bad; and I am bad."

(2) When your goal is relating well to other people and you actually relate

well and win their approval, if you tie up your relating to your self-esteem-your
worth as a person-then you tell yourself, "That is good!" and also, "I am a good

and worthy person!" If you fail to win the approval of significant others, you
then rate your effort and your self as unworthy.

That seems quite clear-and clearly gets you into trouble. As a fallible human,

you can't help failing at work and at love, so your self-esteem is at best
temporary. Even when it is high, you are in real danger of failing next time and
of plummeting down again. Worse yet, since you know this after awhile, and
you know that your worth as a person depends on your success, you make
yourself anxious about important achievements-and, very likely, your anxiety
interferes with your performances and makes you more likely to fail.

Rotten go! Your need for self-esteem makes you less likely to achieve it and

more anxious when you do. Unless, of course, you are perfect which is highly
unlikely.

Realizing this some centuries ago, some philosophers-Asian and Greek and

Roman, among others-invented self-acceptance. They said you could
constructively choose to always have what is called unconditional self-
acceptance (USA) by merely strongly deciding to have it-and keep it. Simple!

To achieve USA, you still pick an important goal-such as work or love-and

you evaluate its achievement as good or bad, successful or unsuccessful. But-
watch it now!-you refuse to rate or measure your self, your being, as "good" or
"bad." You realize, along with a modern philosopher, Alfred Korzybski, that
your performance is part of you, but certainly not all of you. You did it and are
largely responsible for it. But it is a single performance, can easily change (be
better or worse) tomorrow, and is always-yes, always-one ever-changing aspect
of you. As Korzybski said, you are not your behavior. You are that and
thousands of other behaviors-good, bad, and indifferent.

So you accurately tell yourself, "I did that desirable or undesirable act. It

certainly did not do itself! I did it with my little hatchet; and I will-because of
my talents and fallibilities-do many more desirable and undesirable behaviors.
But I am not my acts just a person who behaves well and badly."

Period. You evaluate the efficacy of your thoughts, feelings, and actions; but

you don't rate or measure your total self or efficacy. In fact, you can't because
you are a changeable individual. You are not static. You grow, develop,

progress-and retrogress. Why? Because you do.

Is this the only way you can get unconditional self-acceptance? No. You can

get it indirectly, by convincing yourself that somebody gives it to you
gratuitously-say God, your fairy godmother, your mother, a therapist, or
someone else. But, first of all, you would have to prove that that spirit or person
gives you USA. Otherwise, you really give it to yourself-which, fortunately, you
can do. Instead of saying that God (or the devil!) gave you USA, why not merely
say that you did? That's more honest! You saw that conditional self-acceptance
(CSA) wouldn't work, so you decided to give USA to yourself unconditionally.
Why not?

The main thing is: You take it, get it, keep it by choice. Go right ahead. Be my

guest. Then no one can take it away from you-but you! Neat. You decide (1) "I
can take it." (2) "I will take and keep it." (3) "I am the master of my fate. I am
the captain of my soul."

In other words: "I accept myself, my existence, my being with my fallibility.

Too bad about it. But I'm still okay. To define myself as non-okay-worthless-is
silly and will make me more fallible. I'm okay because I think I am. Or, more
accurately, I am a person who has many good and many bad traits. Let me rate
them, such as they are, and not rate me."

Both self-esteem and self-acceptance, then, can be had definitionally-for the

asking, for the choosing. Take one or the other. Choose! Better yet, take no
global rating. Choose your goals and values and rate how you experience them-
well or badly. Don't rate yourself, being, entity, personality at all. Your totality is
too complex and too changing to measure. Repeatedly acknowledge that.

Now stop farting around and get on with your life!

athaniel Branden became a guru of selfesteem when he published,

in 1969, The Psychology of SelfEsteem: A New Concept of Man's Psychological
Nature. Actually, it wasn't entirely new, since it devoutly followed the
philosophy of Ayn Rand, from which Branden, at that time, was beginning to
break. Rand, in Atlas Shrugged (1957) and several other books, deified reason
and competence and was fanatically one-sided about that-as was her prophet,
Branden.

Under the heading of "the basic conditions of selfesteem," Branden placed the

first and fundamental requirement: that "He preserve an indomitable will to
understand." People with selfesteem had to be clear, intelligible, able to
comprehend that which falls within the range of awareness and which is the
guardian of their mental health and intellectual growth. The two requisites of
selfesteem were self-confidence-or what Albert Bandura (1987) later called self-
efficacy-and self-respect.

Actually, the two are not necessarily related. You can respect yourself for a

number of reasons, one of which encompasses achieve ment, efficacy, and
competence; and this is the reason that Rand and Branden deified and deemed
necessary for real self-respect.

To his credit, Branden was not as rigid as Rand, and over the years began to

see that self-respect and self-acceptance could be linked to other human
characteristics. In The Six Pillars of SelfEsteem, Branden (1994) becomes more
liberal and lists six essentials of selfesteem:

Now this is more like it-and includes a lot more than living competently,

achievingly, productively, and with reason. It includes character traits, such as
honesty, integrity, and being socially responsible-which Rand and Branden
originally neglected. You live with others and had better respect yourself while
honoring others. This overlaps with the existentialist views of Martin Buber,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Alfred Adler, and Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy (REBT).

Peculiarly enough, however, Branden places self-acceptance under selfesteem.

Branden at times sees what unconditional acceptance is but also sees it partially.
Thus, he says in Six Pillars of SelfEsteem, that you can do self-acceptance
exercises morning, noon, and night by fully (and presumably unconditionally)
accepting your body, your feelings, your conflicts, your thoughts, your actions,
your assets and shortcomings, your fears, your pain, your anger, your sexuality,
your joy, your perceptions, your knowledge, and your excitement.

I couldn't put it better myself! Oddly enough, Branden keeps conditional self-

acceptance, but makes it part of unconditional selfesteem-which is what USA is.

He tells you that you can unreservedly accept yourself (which you of course can)
by first setting up conditions of achievement and social character-which, he
somehow fails to see, vitiate your full self-acceptance.

So Branden almost, but not quite, stays in the CSA instead of the USA camp.

He rightly-along with Rand-shows how useful and "rational" are competence
and social character. Then, in a typical Randian manner, he says that you have
to, absolutely must, achieve them in order to accept and respect your self, your
totality.

Why must you? How can you unconditionally accept important conditions?

Because achievement and social integrity are distinctly important, Branden
makes them necessary and sacred. That is why, in my book Ayn Rand: Her
Fanatical, Fascistic, and Devoutly Religious Philosophy, I show how this
philosophy is unworkable.

As for Branden, I think that he could define his terms more clearly and

uncontradictably as follows:

Conditional selfesteem: Defining your thoughts, feelings, and actions as

"good" and "commendable" when they help you (and others) achieve your main
goals (such as good health, longevity, and happiness). When you achieve these
outcomes, you rate yourself, your totality, as "good." Your self-rating is thereby
dependent on your "good" achievements.

Unconditional self-acceptance: Choosing goals and values that help you (and

others) but determinedly accepting or respecting your self or totality whether or
not you perform well and gain the approval of others. You respect or approve of
you even when you view your behaviors as undesirable and against your chosen
goals.

Rating or evaluating your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors but not your self

or totality: Telling yourself, "It is good to achieve my goals and purposes,
because I desire to fulfill them. But I am never a good person or a bad person, no
matter what I do. I don't have to rate my self at all-only what I think, feel, and
do."

Actually, as I shall keep showing in this book, the third form of evaluation-