Nathaniel Branden is a psychologist who began his career as a member of Ayn Rand’s legendary inner circle. Most people know Rand through her most popular novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but these were just literary expressions of her philosophy, Objectivism, which set out her brilliant, if sometimes exhausting, world view.
That view encompassed all of the main areas of philosophy, including a complex ethical theory with a foundational account of human psychology. Branden developed an entire career around articulating her approach—and in particular, a compelling account of self-esteem.
“I define self-esteem as the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.”
For Branden, human beings encounter a world in which they must make a fundamental choice: use their minds to identify reality and make choices in light of the actual facts, or—for whatever reason—spend life clashing with them, pursuing fantasies and untruth. Self-esteem is a form of much-needed confidence in our ability to successfully navigate our lives.
“Self-esteem…is confidence in the efficacy of our mind, in our ability to think. By extension, it is confidence in our ability to learn, make appropriate choices and decisions, and respond effectively to change. It is also the experience that success, achievement, fulfillment – happiness – are right and natural for us. The survival-value of such confidence is obvious; so is the danger when it is missing.”
So, it is decidedly not “the euphoria or buoyancy that may be temporarily induced by a drug, a compliment, or a love affair.” In other words, much of the approach we’ve taken for decades is wrong. Thankfully being questioned, this is the idea that we can build up others’ self-esteem with lavish praise, deserved or not.
Self-esteem isn’t a gift from others, but a survival tool: “The root of our need for self-esteem is the need for a consciousness to learn to trust itself. And the root of the need to learn such trust is the fact that consciousness is volitional: we have the choice to think or not to think. We control the switch that turns consciousness brighter or dimmer. We are not rational — that is, reality-focused — automatically. This means that whether we learn to operate our mind in such a way as to make ourselves appropriate to life is ultimately a function of our choices.”
Branden puts the challenge frankly: “Do we strive for consciousness or for its opposite? For rationality or its opposite? For coherence and clarity or their opposite? For truth or its opposite?”
Does this make sense? How might it improve and inform both our personal and parenting choices? Lots to consider.