Feature
Rest for Our Souls
Confession in an Age of Self-Esteem
by Jim Forest
Among the hottest best-sellers of the 1970s was a book that had the catchy title, I’m Okay, You’re Okay. One of its enthusiastic readers, a young priest in Boston, gave a sermon about it that was a rave review. He wished he could give everyone he knew a copy. The book’s message was simple: To love others started with loving yourself, and loving yourself meant acquiring self-esteem.
At the end of Mass, standing at the door, the priest asked one of his older parishioners how he had liked the sermon. The man wasn’t eager to criticize but responded, “I haven’t read the book. If what you say is true, it’s better than the Bible. My only problem was that I kept thinking of Christ on the Cross saying to those who were watching him die, ‘If everybody’s okay, what in blazes am I doing up here?’”
The problem is I’m not okay, and the chances are neither are you.
I’m Okay, You’re Okay was one of the pioneering books in launching the self-esteem movement, which has gone on to produce a Niagara Falls of books, magazine articles, and television shows that remind us that, to the extent that we lack self-esteem, we are unhappy, our marriages doomed, our careers stunted, while a society whose citizens are blessed with high levels of self-esteem will be more stable, more prosperous, and less troubled with anti-social or criminal behavior. In 1986 the California State Legislature even created the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility.
Stressing the Self
Unfortunately, recent studies in America and other countries suggest that self-esteem isn’t delivering on its promises.
“A preoccupation with self-esteem may be inevitable in a society where self-worth is often defined by a diploma from Harvard, a size 4 dress or a mansion in Southampton,” commented New York Times journalist Erica Goode in a report published last October. She noted that one of the findings of recent self-esteem studies is that criminals often have more self-esteem than people who are not a danger to their neighbors.
One of the researchers she quoted, Dr. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, argues that the frantic pursuit of self-worth as measured through external trappings exacts a high personal and social toll. “The pursuit of self-esteem has short-term benefits but long-term costs,” says Crocker, “ultimately diverting people from fulfilling their fundamental human needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy and leading to poor self-regulation and mental and physical health.”
She found that people whose sense of self-esteem is based on good looks, favorable reception of others, academic or vocational achievement, recreational performance, or similar yardsticks are actually more at risk of difficulties, relationship conflicts, aggression, and an increased likelihood of drug or alcohol dependence. In a study of 642 college freshmen, she found that students whose self-regard was based heavily on academic performance reported more stress and more conflicts with their teachers than did their peers. They spent more time studying than other students but did no better in their classes.
Freshmen who invested heavily in appearing attractive reported more aggressiveness, anger, and hostility than others, more alcohol and drug use, and more symptoms of eating disorders. They also became more depressed as the year wore on. In contrast, students who judged themselves by more internal measures such as religious faith or virtue were less likely to show anger and aggression and were more restrained in their use of alcohol and drugs, even though some of them had to cope with greater feelings of loneliness for being outside the main currents of social life on campus.
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