Replies

Sink,

I think you're one of our better known, and more interesting posters but you're letting semantics undermine your credibility on this issue.

There is MORE than one study indicating(others involve research into juvenile offenders) that "self-esteem" as opposed to self-respect or regard was higher in offenders than in non-offender populations.

About a decade ago in Scientific American, research showed that American parents and students felt better about their intelligence and school/test performance than the Asian parents and students that outperformed them.

Self-esteem is the superficial self-love with no consideration of merit or worth. Self-worth or self-respect is tied into one's accomplishments, moral character, ingenuity, etc.

Do a quick read of crimelibrary.com, and you'll find nearly all of the psychopathic killers had an inflated sense of their worth vis-a-vis other humans they encountered. It was this sense of superiority, this hollow Narcissism(described by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment) that fueled their actions. Yes, SOME(but not all by a long shot) had traumas or some level of hatred for themselves, but they still operated from the context of hyper-Narcissism.

The fact is, the self-esteem that the author and various scientists are referring to IS a significant problem. Believe me, have you met young criminal types? I'm 25 and I've met a fair share. They're almost uniformly arrogant(and I've been labelled a tad overconfident myself, so that's saying something) and regard others as means to their own ends, even if it means violence and manipulation. These budding psychopaths know they hurt people and know they do wrong, but DO NOT CARE. They lack empathy and value ONLY themselves. They do NO hate themselves in any capacity. Quite to the contrary, they believe themselves near-infallible.