Aesthetic Realism taught me that every person’s deepest desire is honestly to like the world different from ourselves. We were born to know and see meaning in people and the things we meet, and when we have this purpose we honestly respect ourselves. We come from the whole world and have its structure in us—”The world,” Mr. Siegel explained, “is that eternal and ever so intimate thing that nestles in all our bones contentedly.”
Therefore, if we don’t do all we can to be fair to that world, to find good meaning in it—even when circumstances may be difficult—we cannot like ourselves.
Like many people, I thought I would like myself if I made a lot of money, had a big apartment and an impressive career. But I felt empty and I didn’t know why. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known Mr. Siegel explains:
Aesthetic Realism would grant the importance of money, health, position, family, fame or prestige—but it does say that the thing most needed by man to have a like of himself or respect for himself that is valid, is the feeling that the world is seen by him in a fair way, an accurate way, and one that goes towards, as much as possible, liking the world.
I am going to show, through the scientific principles of Aesthetic Realism, how this is so. I will also discuss two recent approaches to “self-esteem,” a subject that has been so popular in America. The first is the best-seller How to Raise Your Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden, author of many books on the subject, and the second is Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning’s book,Self-Esteem.
These books are rooted in such bedrock falsity about the self that they are useless and even harmful. People, desperate to like themselves, will read them, but they encourage things that will have one respect oneself less. InThe Right Of, Ellen Reiss says:
The two questions people most want answered are, Why don’t I like myself? and, How can I like myself? What people are being told as they consult magazines and counselors is: You should like who you are period…This approach never works.
And explaining the reason why, she continues:
Contempt is false self-esteem: it is the feeling, As I look down on her and him and it and you, how wonderful I am! Then, because the self is constructed ethically, we inevitably…have a low opinion of ourselves, feel deeply ill-at-ease, because we made ourselves mighty by disparaging the world. People…may like the flattery of, Oh, you should esteem yourself more because you’re such a worthwhile person!—but what they really want is authentic criticism of their contempt.
That is what I was looking for in 1976. I was 22, and though I loved and had studied acting and the performing arts, I felt with every year I liked myself less. I was selling condominiums and lived alone in the model apartment of a retirement complex in Sunrise, Florida. I was so unhappy that I often smoked pot before I went into work so I could face customers and put on a big smile. At night and on weekends I had a fierce drive to be alone, and then after a few days I would desperately call anybody I knew to make plans to go to a movie or dinner. I just didn’t understand why I felt so bad.
I had heard about Aesthetic Realism, and one day I called the Foundation. That afternoon as I requested information, looking out the window at a bright, sunny Florida day, I told the young woman on the phone that I just had to learn to like myself first, and then I’d be at ease with people. I was so surprised when she explained that Aesthetic Realism shows a person has to like the way he sees what is not oneself first. She said that it’s like the way a baby grows—it takes in the outside world in the form of food, which makes it grow and become strong. Our minds are like that.
That day began a happy revolution in me! Studying Aesthetic Realism I never felt lonely again, and several months later I wrote in a letter to Eli Siegel that I had a feeling that was completely new to me—I felt comfortable in my own skin. Through my education, I have honest respect for myself which grows with every year; I love Mr. Siegel for this, and feel privileged to study in the magnificent classes taught by Ellen Reiss.
Self-Esteem in a Child
In beautiful, factual sentences from Self and World, Mr. Siegel writes:
The greatest biological fact in human history is this: that the whole world went to the making of every individual; in other words, that it was the universe, or existence, or reality, which gave us birth.
If a person is born of the world as a whole…he…is in some relation to the world as a whole; and…he feels he has some duties towards it….What is the chief of these duties? The unconscious, as judge, has said: “Do not separate yourself from reality. If you do, you are not being yourself entirely, and one side of you will punish the other.”
I learned that our moment-to-moment lives are about this—do we want to strengthen our relation to the world?; or do we want to separate ourselves contemptuously?
Growing up, there were times I felt happily related to things. For instance, I loved going to cotillion—dancing classes—with many children, learning the fox trot, the quick change and flow of the cha-cha, the structure and freedom of the waltz where you followed the rhythm, the steps, all the while turning gracefully. I felt kind and strong with a girl I was dancing with, that we moved well together. I also liked when we got to do popular dances, like the one that was big then in Miami—the alligator.
I learned that the reason I liked myself at these times was because I was putting opposites together. In a class, Ellen Reiss explained:
The question is whether in the utmost individuality of a person the makeup is the same as the makeup of the world…In the self-esteem movement, the object “self” is not seen truly. What is the object you are esteeming?—the relation of such things as rest and motion, continuity and surprise, freedom and order, logic and emotion, sameness and difference.
“Every time we honestly like something else,” said Ms. Reiss, “we like ourselves because its structure is in us.”
Yet I often had another purpose, trying to have contempt, and I did this very much through the way I used my family. I thought the Coopermans were better than everyone in the neighborhood—we had money, a nice home, my brothers and I had new clothes every year. I looked at other families and thought: “The Formans have money but their daughter takes drugs; Mrs. Rosenberg had such poor taste in decorating her home; the Goldsteins are nice but his business is in trouble; The Watkins aren’t even Jewish!”
I was also mixed up about my own family. I saw disappointment and confusion between my mother and father, but I didn’t try to understand what they felt. Rather, I felt superior to these two grownups. Years later in an Aesthetic Realism class, Ellen Reiss asked me, “Do you think you used your parents to feel you were better than the world?” The answer was yes, and I learned there was a direct relation between that and why, early, I did not esteem myself.
In their books, Branden, McKay and Fanning all put forth the idea that low self-esteem is caused by others, chiefly one’s parents. McKay and Fanning advise therapists to “Remember that your client’s self-esteem was damaged originally when an authority figure (parent) repeatedly attacked his or her worth.” This evades the fact that a child can attack, too—I did. Children can have horrible ill will for their parents, and they do not know that this is a great cause of their feeling unsure and nervous later.
Hearing this described so clearly, I began to know myself better. “You are a keen, sharp person,” she said, “but you also want to see a sunrise.”
In the chapter “Integrating the Younger Self” Nathaniel Branden says that as adults we have a “subpersonality” within us, a “child-self,” and we lack self-esteem now because “We reject that child just as, perhaps others once did.” What we need to do is:
Learn to forgive the child we once were for what he or she didn’t know, or couldn’t do, or couldn’t cope with.
To do this he suggests the following exercise:
Spend a few minutes looking at photographs of yourself as a young child…close your eyes and take several deep, relaxing breaths…Go inside…generate the sense of your child-self standing in front of you. Then, without saying a word, imagine holding that child in your arms, embracing and gently stroking, so that you are in a nurturing relationship…Remain gentle and firm. Let the touch of your hands, your arms, and your chest communicate acceptance, compassion, respect.
What Branden is telling a person to do here is exactly what causes lack of self-esteem in the first place—it is sheer self-love. I didn’t need this as an imaginary exercise—I went after and received adoration from various members of my family for years, but I despised myself nevertheless.
In my work as an Aesthetic Realism consultant, it is a privilege to strengthen a man’s esteem in himself by encouraging him to be fair, as we ask questions like these:
- “Would you like yourself more if you tried to understand what you father feels?
- Do you want your parents to care for each other or to argue and come to you for consolation?
- When are you stronger—liking things or fighting with them?”
Men respect themselves when they hear criticism of their contempt, and they change!
Romance: Self-Love or Love of the World?
I am grateful to have learned that a man will respect himself in love when he uses a woman to know and care for the world. The lack of self-respect people often have in love is explained by Mr. Siegel in Self and World when he writes:
If love for another is really another form of self-love and untruly based, this love for another will be a factor in profound pain.
A man uses a woman to love himself when he wants her to make him the most important thing in the world: to hang on to his every word with the proper reverence. But this never makes a man proud; I know because I wanted those things, and it always made me unsure and agitated.
Using fancy “philosophic” language, Nathaniel Branden promotes this self-love in the chapter “Self-Esteem and Romantic Love” from another book,The Psychology of Self-Esteem. He writes that in love a man has a “celebration of himself”:
One sees one’s own soul—and its value—in the emotions on the face of one’s partner…the person one most desires is the person…one…regards as one’s proper psychological mirror.
And then he writes:
In sex, man escapes from any malevolent feeling of life’s futility or drudgery, of his own senseless servitude.
It means very much to me to know that sex can have a man care for everything more, not to try to “escape” from things. Through what I have learned from Aesthetic Realism, the whole world means more to me through the woman I love very much, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman, who is my wife of ten years.
Meryl is no “mirror” of me and I’m glad! In fact, she is a friendly and keen critic of me, and I count on this from her to be all I can be, so I can like myself. Knowing Meryl, her tremendous opinion of Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, her perceptions of the world, music, people, what she’s taught me about the feelings of women, strengthens me so much. I am proud to try to have a good effect on her.
Guilt & Self-Criticism: Friends or Enemies?
In Self and World Eli Siegel states definitively:
In every instance of a guilt feeling, there is evidence pointing to the fact that the cause is a feeling of separation of oneself from reality as a whole.
Contrary to what most people and practitioners think, Aesthetic Realism sees guilt as a tremendously important and valuable thing. In fact, it gives dignity to the human self.
Nathaniel Branden is ignorant and brutal on this subject. He says guilt essentially arises from the “condemnation of…parents or spouses,” and he strokes the ego when he states, as principle, this lie which in its flattery is so hurtful: “There is a place within us where-faults or no faults-we like ourselves.” He writes:
One of the worst mistakes we can make is to tell ourselves that feeling guilty necessarily represents some kind of virtue.
Guilt, I learned, comes from our own criticism of ourselves when we are unfair, not essentially from what anyone else has told us. Right on this point, the self-esteem movement is cowardly and outrageous; self-criticism is seen as a demon within to be extricated. McKay and Fanning’s book Self-Esteemconcentrates on this. They write:
Everyone has a critical inner voice…The critic blames you for things that go wrong…The critic keeps an album of your failures…The critic reads your friends’ minds and convinces you that they are bored…or disgusted by you…The critic takes your self-esteem and puts it through a Cuisinart.
They give this example of how “the critic” operates:
Consider the case of a 29-year old entomologist…applying for a faculty position. During interviews he would observe the dress and manner of the interview committee and make guesses about the sort of people they were…He would handle questions by weighing the best possible answer, given what the committee seemed to expect. And while he was doing all that, he was also listening to a continuous monologue in which his critic said, “You’re a fraud, you don’t know anything. You won’t fool these people…Can’t you crack a joke?
…During the interview he became more and more stiff.
This example is, in its way, thrilling, because as we look closely we see in an ordinary way the Aesthetic Realism principle that is like math: as a person’s contempt increases, his belief in himself plummets.
For example, they way this man observes the committee’s “dress and manner,” guessing about “the sort of people they were,” has a sizing up of who a person is, what his life has had in it, in a swift, contemptuous way. When he “handled” questions by “weighing the best possible answer given what the committee seemed to expect,” that is strategy, not honesty. This man is scheming rather than being fair, and that is why he gets nervous and stiff.
McKay and Fanning’s solution is to get rid of your “critic,” and they give detailed techniques for how to do this such as “mentally scream[ing] at the critic” so he “finally shuts up,” using “mantras” such as “To hell with these put downs!” and “Get off my back!” If this doesn’t work:
It’s time for stronger measures. Put a rubber band about your wrist and snap it while subvocalizing your mantra…You scream it internally and simultaneously snap the rubber band…The sharp stinging sensation breaks the chain of negative cognitions.
To nourish good feelings about yourself they suggest various exercises: 1) write a one-sentence description of your good points on index cards and leave them all around—on your mirror, night stand, your refrigerator, in your closet and briefcase; or 2) prepare a meal and purposely:
Drop a cup or a plate and break it…If derogatory labels pop into your mind like “stupid” or “clumsy” or “bad,” cut them off…Tell yourself, “I allow myself to make mistakes.
These things are laughable but also terrible because people yearn to like themselves and they will try them hoping they work. It’s like giving sawdust and tacks to someone who is thirsty. People need the solid, dignified means of learning to criticize and like ourselves—the education of Aesthetic Realism—which has been tested for decades . In The Right Of #458, subtitled “The Art of Self-Criticism,” Mr. Siegel writes:
According to Aesthetic Realism, a person is critical of himself all the time; and one of the things which would be success in life for him, would be if he could put that criticism in conscious, sober, non-complaining language and be proud of how he expresses it.
This, Aesthetic Realism enables a person to do to the great benefit of his life.
Self-Esteem & Shakespeare
There is a beautiful poem in which a man speaks of his feeling of “low self-esteem.” It is Sonnet 29 by one of the greatest writers of all time—William Shakespeare:
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee; and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Eli Siegel lectured on the plays of William Shakespeare and on every one of his sonnets, and wrote the great, critical dramatic masterpiece,Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Revisited, comprehending as no one before had, Shakespeare’s intentions, the beauty of his art, and the feelings he had to himself.
Speaking of this sonnet, Mr. Siegel said that Shakespeare, “Like many other persons, would say he feels all alone. Everyone has felt like an outcast.” Shakespeare beweeps his “outcast state”, saying he wants things that others have, that he wishes he were “Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,/Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope.”
But then, he writes, “Haply I think on thee” and his feeling changes. Instead of feeling low, despising himself, he now feels “Like to the lark at break of day arising”:
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare is grateful for the existence of something else, and it makes all the difference in the world. “The sweet love” that he remembers, said Mr. Siegel, “is a sense of the true self of him,” that in William Shakespeare that wants to like the world, that in him which was so greatly for art. Said Mr. Siegel:
I know that if a person [is] very sad, and thinks life is hopeless and there’s nothing to it, if that person can like one thing honestly, and say so, the sun is…ready to move…Shakespeare feels that he has seen something enabling him to like the world.
In Aesthetic Realism, I met beauty, logic, kindness and science that is great, that I respect and love with my keenest mind and my grateful heart—and has the sun ever moved in my life! This tremendous, dignified opportunity to like oneself truly awaits people everywhere.