Working with Self-Esteem in Psychotherapy appeared in Hatherleigh's Quarterly Series Directions in Clinical Psychology. The following preface appeared in front of the text under the title "Editor's Note."
It is generally accepted that strengthening a client's self-esteem is a fundamental goal of all psychotherapy. However, what is not commonly acknowledged is that it is impossible to work on self-esteem directly. As the author explains, self-esteem grows through insights and experiences gained in therapy and translated into action in the world; thc client gradually experiences a sense of growing competence and worthiness, and begins to value his or her abilities. In this lesson, Dr. Branden provides a working definition of self-esteem: the experience of being competent to cope with life's basic challenges and of being worthy of happiness -- self-efficacy and self-respect. Without positive self-esteem, psychological growth is stunted and resilience in the face of life's adversities is diminished. The higher a person's self-esteem, the more ambitious, open, and honest he or she will be, and the more constructive his or her relationships with others will be.
Dr. Branden describes what he terms the "six pillars of self-esteem" -- the practices of: (1) Living consciously; (2) self-acceptance; (3) self-responsibility; (4) self-awareness; (5) living purposefully; and (6) integrity.
Dr. Branden's approach presents us with a valuable focus and a number of specific techniques to use in helping clients gain positive self-esteem and recover positive self-esteem when, for whatever reason, it has been lost. He has developed a unique sentence-completion program to stimulate insight and integration. In this lesson, he describes how this program can be used either as homework exercises or in individual or group sessions to identify goals and make action plans; understand how one's beliefs about oneself can impede or facilitate these goals; and, through this experience, help the client achieve an understanding of his or her value. (We have also provided a client workbook that can be used to implement Dr. Branden' s 31-week program; additional copies are available for $5 each.)
One question that may occur to the reader is: Can a client have too much self-esteem? It was the psychiatrist, Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, in T. S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party, who said: "Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who...are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." It is important to make the distinction between self-esteem and self-aggrandizement. Most of our clients do not suffer from an excess of self-esteem, but in everyday life, we do seem to encounter people who distort their self-concept into something "larger than life." Dr. Branden's analysis seems to imply that this would be a consequence of denying low self-esteem. The acceptance of the reality of one's limits would thus appear to be an integral part of healthy self-regard.