This book has a
very straightforward thesis – the Self-Esteem Movement, which made raising the
esteem of mainly young people the panacea of all personal and social ills, which
really started to make an impact during the 1960s and has been a formidable
force ever since, has not only failed to cure the ills which it was designed to
combat but, on the contrary, has produced a generation of children who are narcissistic,
self-absorbed, lacking in real values, prone to self-destructive habits and
violent towards others. As you can tell already, this book does not pull any
punches! The main thrust of the book is aimed at this movement in the U.S.A.
but its general argument is thoroughly applicable to what has happened in many
societies throughout the world.

Let’s
start with the authors – are they in a position to support their thesis? Both
are practising psychologists and specialists in school (L.L.Smith) or paediatric
(C.H.Elliott) psychology. Both are clinical psychologists and faculty members
at the Fielding Graduate Institute. They have both worked in their field for
more than twenty years. No fault to be found there!

So
how do they support their thesis? The answer is that they use two methods – one
the way of the professional psychologist and the other that commonly employed
by journalists. Taking them separately, the professional approach is based upon
a wide and critical reading of the literature on, among other things, the
effectiveness, or otherwise, of self-esteem raising techniques on individuals’
ability to adjust to reality, the links between high self-esteem and neurotic
or psychotic behaviour, the attitudes of those with low self-esteem, the
similarities between the reaction to failure of those with low self-esteem and
those with punctured high-esteem, and much more. This part of the book is well
researched and forcefully argued. It is generally very convincing and is
supported by a first-rate critical apparatus. The book is deliberately written
so that the non-specialist can read the body of the work smoothly without
obtrusive technicalities. The endnotes, however, contain a wealth of technical
information enabling the specialist to follow up on any point and to check the
references if s/he feels the need. So no problem here.

The
second, journalistic, method is to produce juvenile crime statistics regarding
drug abuse, rape, assault, theft, etc. and link these with educational data regarding,
for example, falling SAT results, the forging of test results, the artificial
inflation of High School (and Middle and even Elementary School) grades in
order to keep everyone happy and then to correlate these crime/educational
statistics with the rise of the Self-Esteem Movement. The authors truthfully
admit that we are dealing with correlations rather than causal relationships
but they paint a fairly convincing picture even if a few reservations did pop
up in the mind of this reader. To make that picture stick, the authors very
cleverly use little cameo stories of youngsters coping, or not coping, with
various difficult situations and linking these, point by point, with realistic
self-esteem or artificially high self-esteem and sometimes low self-esteem. The
persuasive effect of these cameos is going to be quite strong with the general
reader.

Along
the way there is a great deal of common sense about parenting and teaching in
particular. Several groups in society come in for a good deal of scathing
comment. Obviously the Self-Esteem gurus receive the most vitriolic treatment.
However, authoritarian (as opposed to authoritative) and permissive parents
along with liberal “I am only a facilitator” teachers also come in for a good
deal of tongue-lashing.

So
do I recommend you to read this book and what are the reservations I mentioned
earlier? It is not only the U.S.A. which is suffering from self-obsessed,
narcissistic young people who lack self-control and empathy for others. It is a
common problem in certain sorts of cultural situation. This is an issue to
which I will return shortly. In the U.S.A. and some other countries the problem
is severe ( but whether as severe as the authors suggest is a moot point) and I
personally agree with the authors that undue emphasis on self-esteem is a major
factor but where I disagree with them is that I think that it is not the only
factor. To answer the first question – yes, this is a book which all parents
and teachers ought to read. It is also a book which all child psychologists and
especially educational psychologists ought to read. Although the authors do not
castigate their own brethren, they too are partly responsible for the
situation.

The
reservations? The roots of the Self-Esteem Movement are to be found in the work
of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow but it seems to me to be unfair to include
them in the blame. They were trying to counteract various deterministic
tendencies in psychology. In trying to get people in general and young people
in particular to take responsibility for their actions, Rogers and Maslow are
the good guys and are on the side of responsible parents and teachers. I have
lived and taught in three countries including a former communist state and a
country in the Middle East. I mention these facts because I think that they are
relevant. The real problem arises out of the unholy alliance between the
Self-Esteem gurus and, in the opinion of the reviewer, the unfettered global
capitalism which has been unleashed on the world. Young people have been faced
for many years now with a mind-boggling materialism which promises instant
gratification, political leaders who say one thing and do another, religions
which are either intolerant or have sold out to materialism (or both), media
which are entirely profit-driven including the ubiquitous television which
caters almost exclusively for the lowest possible common denominator, preening
pop stars and self-adulatory idols of all sorts and, in short, an all-pervasive
culture of individualism. In other words, my main reservation about this book
is that, although its central thesis is correct, the issue needs to be placed
in a wider social context. The Self-Esteem Movement could only have taken root
in a society which has an overly strong streak of narcissism, self-regard and
individualism. Societies which still place a huge emphasis on the “we” and not
just the “I” have not yet been plagued greatly by this problem. Parents as
parents and teachers as teachers can not, on their own, solve the problem. If the
problem is one about which we are concerned then we all need to put on our
political hat and try to mould the type of society where individuals can derive
meaning from playing a constructive role with and for others in a society where
“we” are important.

Please
– read this book and see whether you agree!

© 2002 Kevin M. Purday               

Kevin M. Purday is the head of an
international school in Jordan, and is currently a distance-learning student on
the Philosophy & Ethics of Mental Health course in the Philosophy Dept. at
the University of Warwick.

Categories: ChildhoodDisorders, Relationships