Personally I think this PC self esteem push to be pathetic.
"Oh NO!" cry the taxachussets soccer moms, "We must not keep score; Little Johnny may become upset!" Do we actually think the kids don't know who won? There are very important lessons to be learned in victory AND defeat.
Can you picture this one?: Said the PC publicly indoctrinated engineer; "I don't know if calculations I did on the shuttles' SRM O-Rings were right or wrong, but I FELT very good about them!"
My wife and I train our kids to have an ACCURATE assessment of their capabilities, traits, personality, etc. The self esteen push is a natural progression of the idea that our worth as people depends on our actions. This idea that our value is dependent on our capability in any area of life is a lie, and a truly wonderful precursor to infanticide (also known as the "pro choice" position) and euthanasia.
One classic example would be Marcel Proust. Another would be Soren Kirdegaard. Proust saw suffering and ones response to it as essential in determing both truth and beauty. He wrote his "Rembrance of Things Past" from the sick bed over a period of 14 years. He failed at all major life tasks including love and work, was indordinately attached to his mother, never really supported himself and his homosexuality was marred by an absence of any real (but many imagined) depth or committment. In spite of it all, he remains perhaps the greatest author of the 20th century.
Kierkegaard had an unrequited love, never married, was so depressed and full of self-hatred he sometimes couldn't function, yet he wrote the greatest defence of Christianity and faith by simply pursuing his thesis that there was a "leap of faith" requirement for the religious experience.
I was particularly interested in the Freud quotes which were apt. It is unfortunate Dr. Slater did not mention the self-esteem cult was popularized in the US by Alfred Adler and Rudolph Dreikurs. The latter I knew, and while a great lecturer and persuasive man, he lacked an ineffable something which made one wary.
Thanks Ultima Thule.
I agree. Look at all the people who think the whole world revolves around whether they are successful and happy, and when they don't end up being as successful and happy as they think they should be, they lose it (clinical depression, even school and workplace shootings).
Accurate self-knowledge and an inherent sense of dignity and of their own worth are things that far too few children learn these days.