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Some thoughts on self-actualization and self-esteem
Todd · 04/12/02 at 11:03 ET
To me these are two very different concepts, not that one is a more specific form of the other. They aren't behavioral models per se, imo, they are ideas that reside within particular behavioral models. Self-Actualization: A Humanistic Ideal As I understand it, self-actualization comes from the tradition of humanistic psychology from Goldstein, Rogers, and Maslow, and is based on the notion of innate potentials, and the assumption that the human personality fundamentally seeks them. I think it's a wonderful and noble ideal, but very value-bound and not something that I think lends itself easily to research or even clinical practice, except as a nebulous goal. Defining innate potentials or making any sort of goals out of them is problematic, and the humanistic tradition has a tendency to see human nature as infinitely improveable through education and nurturing, something that has unfortunately not been born out in practice. To me, it's almost spiritual in nature rather than scientific, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's often worth striving for things even if we might be unlikely to attain them in specific cases. But honestly I don't even think self-actualization is a very accurate way to view human motivation in general. I have met a few people who live as if they are seeking self-actualization, but also many who clearly do not, and not in any obvious way explainable in terms of unmet needs. I don't consider it a good predictive model of human motivation in general, from my experience. I think the modern humanistic tradition in general, which was represented by self-actualization at one time, has provided an important skeptical base for criticizing religious zeal (including zeal for humanism itself) and prejudiced certainties, but it has not itself provided a coherent alternative. In my opinion, Humanistic psychologists, like humanists in other areas, mostly critique oppressive views of human nature and stress the value of tolerance and potentials, more than they really offer particularly useful specific models. Self-Esteem: A self-evaluation that affects behavior Self-esteem is a little easier to define and quantify because it means establishing how we perceive ourselves, our worth, and our acceptance by others, which are things we all become familiar with when growing up. Poor self-esteem is reflected in feelings like worthlessness, alienation, and lack of acceptance, and is prevalent among people who seek mental health help. This has led to a general feeling in much of the self-help and popular psychology literature that self-esteem is a kind of panacea for mental health and adaptation to the circumstances of life. Since self-actualization is also associated with "goodness" in general, the two may have sometimes been erroneously linked as if they were measuring the same "human goodness" relevant to mental health and quality of life. Personally, I don't think that is realistic. High self-esteem is often found among people who are aggressive and domineering, so is not in itself the general panacea sometimes claimed in self-help books. Anger temporarily raises our self-esteem along with mitigating our perception of risk in order to support aggressive response. And contrary to what was once commonly assumed, bullies do not generally have low self-esteem and "compensate" for it by being aggressive, they most often have high self-esteem. High self-esteem is probably not a "cause" of aggression, but seems to serve as one of the releasers, whereas low self-esteem inhibits it (among other things). So high self-esteem by itself doesn't protect us from feeling threatened and responding with domineering and aggression, nor does it prevent people from simply exercising dominance without aggression or threat. Most people with high self-esteem of course avoid bullying. I think higher self-esteem is usually better than low self-esteem for the individual, but there are other additional factors besides self-esteem that lead to the positive qualities commonly associated with its "goodness." I think the single-minded focus I often see on self-esteem is at least somewhat misguided. That's why I think it is important to distinguish the measureable and mostly but not entirely positive notion of self-esteem from the value-bound and idealistic concept of self-actualization, and to recognize both the merits and limitations of each, and the ideas behind them. kind regards, Todd
Understand, dominance behavior bolstered by high self-esteem isn't neccessarily always bad. Social hierarchy is part of human nature, and probably serves useful purposes that we take for granted because we mostly notice it when it becomes irksome and opprssive. But even when not oppressive, conspicuous dominance behavior does create a conflict with the egalitarian values that lay behind the humanistic tradition where the notion of self-actualization was born.
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