Self-centrically:
From the standpoint of Therapy from the Will* ego strength is inspired by two different understandings - self-centric and holistic - of what’s in your best interest and how to best bring it about. The self-centric understanding regards an inner self as the top priority, which is facilitated by the conceptual way of knowing. This way of knowing enables you and others to categorize things and events and explain their relationship to each other from an external, or an objective, vantage point as if everything is separate and distinct.
The self-centric understanding is made possible through your rational intelligence and is based on knowing about your self and its worth relative to each and everything around you. Understanding what’s in your best interest draws your attention to options and choices that are in keeping with your needs, wants, interests, and values that are consistent with your self-identity. But as conditions change so does your self-centric understanding of what the greater good is, which reprioritizes the relative importance of the options and choices that best accords with them.
Therapy from the Will recognizes the great adaptive value of the conceptual way of knowing that enables you to objectively represent all areas of your existence, as well as the numerous phenomena, or things and events, that occur within these conceptualized areas. Analyzing and reasoning about things and events logically and scientifically and categorizing and evaluating them judgmentally as good or bad from the standpoint of the identity, values, and needs of you a person with an inner self is then possible. The particular self-centric perspective that results enables you to distinguish your inner self from others as more or less unique, separate, adequate, and worthwhile with dissimilar inborn and acquired strengths and weaknesses that account for your particular history of success and failure and the divergence of yours from everyone else’s destiny.
From the vantage point of your self-centric perspective you can individualistically engage in various pursuits and practical tasks, document and narrate your history, and affect others’ points of view, behavior, and feelings through speech, language, mathematics, and culture. The conceptual way of knowing about your existence, which this vantage point is based on, leads to the codification of laws and contracts by various governments, organizations, institutions, and businesses. These important societal structures are grounded in self-centric beliefs and values and headed by people whose views are in agreement with them. Rewards, praise, penalties and punishments are meted out for behaviors that benefit or harm the functioning of these structures and the people such as you in its area of influence and responsibility.
Your self-identity, the quality of which inspires ego strength, is affected by the social reputation you accrue by virtue of the self-centrically based evaluations by others of your deeds. Depending upon the value society assigns to your behavior that guides other’s consideration of you, your social reputation is represented and absorbed in your self-identity as a positive or negative social image. As a result you’re motivated to succeed not only for the practical and material rewards it leads to but also for a positive social image that enhances your self-identity and inspires you to intend the effort necessary to persevere.
From the conceptual way of knowing, that informs you indirectly about yourself and reality, in so far as it’s based an extrinsic, or palpable, point of view of what exists, it appears as if you and everything else have independent existences that separately affect the world. This dualistic point of view divides observer from observed, cause from effect, mind from body, will from action, time from distance, good from bad, life from death, and so forth, leading to a rational belief in an independent inner self whose actions are expressions of its supposed free will. From this viewpoint, feelings, needs, wants, interests, concerns, thoughts, and intentions appear as if they belong to the self or reside in it. Everyone more or less is in competition with those around them because each person believes the inner self and its worth exist in reality, and also because each person holds their own self-centric view about what the greater good is from the vantage point of their self-identity and its individualized and narrowed self-interest.
The belief in free will necessitates that you view the inner self, or I, not only as the causal agent of what you do, but also responsible for both how well you do it and the quality of the outcome. Thus it makes rational sense to credit the inner self with praise for controlling or achieving your objectives when they compare well your self-ideals. For you, just as others similarly believe it’s true for them, accomplishing idealized objectives means that your inherent makeup is essentially special. As long as you can continue to perform as creditably as you have up until then, you feel conditionally inspired and confident to intently exert the necessary effort to keep pursuing idealized results to win the self-centric praise and benefits that elevate your self-identity.
Common examples of idealized results are competitive success, performance related approval, perks and material luxuries, other people’s envy or adoration, promotions and advancements, and earned or inherited wealth that enables you to purchase short or long-term escapes from the everyday hustle and bustle. The credit that you continue to attribute to the inner self, or I, is the basis of the inspiration and confidence that upholds your ego strength, which capacitates your efforts with firm intent to cope well with discomfort and strive hard to overcome the many challenges that practically always lie ahead.
Ego strength resulting from feeling special nevertheless is conditional since it depends on you continuing to bring about the practical, material, and symbolic goals you idealize. In so far as you’re not perfect, sooner or later you fall short of confirming that you’re special. When you fall short, you feel less inspired to generate the level of intent necessary to support your efforts. You also feel less confident about being able to attain difficult to reach goals, which are the ones you’re most dependent on for the evidence that supports a belief that you’re at least good enough.
As a result of both less inspiration and confidence you feel apprehensive since you could readily fall short of your idealized goals. You then give up too soon, don’t try as hard as you could, or you turn away and don’t try at all. However, the goals you idealize, which if you don’t attain you can’t feel special, still matter to you self-centrically. At the same time others who also value these goals are more likely to out compete you if you slacken your efforts, which usually you’re well aware of. So once you slacken them and fewer goals are reached, your self-identity suffers relative to others in your reference group whose efforts and successes haven’t abated. Since you can’t generate as much effort, you accomplish even less of what you idealize and feel even more inadequate and unworthy, further weakening your ego strength.
Consequently, you feel trepidation about facing adversity, less capable of striving hard for the goals that matter to you, continue to repress memories and impulses that conflict with your self-identity, don’t advance your life, or maybe backslide in at least one or more areas. If the pause continues for any length of time your life stagnates or worse, which depreciates even more the status of your self-identity on which most of your ego strength is based.
*A number of the seminal ideas on which Therapy from the Will is based are borrowed from Arthur Schopenhauer’s transcendental views on the nature and basis of human knowledge. See Bryan Magee’s, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1997), Oxford University Press; Confessions of a Philosopher (1997), Modern Library Paperbacks; and Arthur Schopenhauer’s Essay on the Freedom of the Will (2005), Dover Classics.
The self-centric understanding is made possible through your rational intelligence and is based on knowing about your self and its worth relative to each and everything around you. Understanding what’s in your best interest draws your attention to options and choices that are in keeping with your needs, wants, interests, and values that are consistent with your self-identity. But as conditions change so does your self-centric understanding of what the greater good is, which reprioritizes the relative importance of the options and choices that best accords with them.
Therapy from the Will recognizes the great adaptive value of the conceptual way of knowing that enables you to objectively represent all areas of your existence, as well as the numerous phenomena, or things and events, that occur within these conceptualized areas. Analyzing and reasoning about things and events logically and scientifically and categorizing and evaluating them judgmentally as good or bad from the standpoint of the identity, values, and needs of you a person with an inner self is then possible. The particular self-centric perspective that results enables you to distinguish your inner self from others as more or less unique, separate, adequate, and worthwhile with dissimilar inborn and acquired strengths and weaknesses that account for your particular history of success and failure and the divergence of yours from everyone else’s destiny.
From the vantage point of your self-centric perspective you can individualistically engage in various pursuits and practical tasks, document and narrate your history, and affect others’ points of view, behavior, and feelings through speech, language, mathematics, and culture. The conceptual way of knowing about your existence, which this vantage point is based on, leads to the codification of laws and contracts by various governments, organizations, institutions, and businesses. These important societal structures are grounded in self-centric beliefs and values and headed by people whose views are in agreement with them. Rewards, praise, penalties and punishments are meted out for behaviors that benefit or harm the functioning of these structures and the people such as you in its area of influence and responsibility.
Your self-identity, the quality of which inspires ego strength, is affected by the social reputation you accrue by virtue of the self-centrically based evaluations by others of your deeds. Depending upon the value society assigns to your behavior that guides other’s consideration of you, your social reputation is represented and absorbed in your self-identity as a positive or negative social image. As a result you’re motivated to succeed not only for the practical and material rewards it leads to but also for a positive social image that enhances your self-identity and inspires you to intend the effort necessary to persevere.
From the conceptual way of knowing, that informs you indirectly about yourself and reality, in so far as it’s based an extrinsic, or palpable, point of view of what exists, it appears as if you and everything else have independent existences that separately affect the world. This dualistic point of view divides observer from observed, cause from effect, mind from body, will from action, time from distance, good from bad, life from death, and so forth, leading to a rational belief in an independent inner self whose actions are expressions of its supposed free will. From this viewpoint, feelings, needs, wants, interests, concerns, thoughts, and intentions appear as if they belong to the self or reside in it. Everyone more or less is in competition with those around them because each person believes the inner self and its worth exist in reality, and also because each person holds their own self-centric view about what the greater good is from the vantage point of their self-identity and its individualized and narrowed self-interest.
The belief in free will necessitates that you view the inner self, or I, not only as the causal agent of what you do, but also responsible for both how well you do it and the quality of the outcome. Thus it makes rational sense to credit the inner self with praise for controlling or achieving your objectives when they compare well your self-ideals. For you, just as others similarly believe it’s true for them, accomplishing idealized objectives means that your inherent makeup is essentially special. As long as you can continue to perform as creditably as you have up until then, you feel conditionally inspired and confident to intently exert the necessary effort to keep pursuing idealized results to win the self-centric praise and benefits that elevate your self-identity.
Common examples of idealized results are competitive success, performance related approval, perks and material luxuries, other people’s envy or adoration, promotions and advancements, and earned or inherited wealth that enables you to purchase short or long-term escapes from the everyday hustle and bustle. The credit that you continue to attribute to the inner self, or I, is the basis of the inspiration and confidence that upholds your ego strength, which capacitates your efforts with firm intent to cope well with discomfort and strive hard to overcome the many challenges that practically always lie ahead.
Ego strength resulting from feeling special nevertheless is conditional since it depends on you continuing to bring about the practical, material, and symbolic goals you idealize. In so far as you’re not perfect, sooner or later you fall short of confirming that you’re special. When you fall short, you feel less inspired to generate the level of intent necessary to support your efforts. You also feel less confident about being able to attain difficult to reach goals, which are the ones you’re most dependent on for the evidence that supports a belief that you’re at least good enough.
As a result of both less inspiration and confidence you feel apprehensive since you could readily fall short of your idealized goals. You then give up too soon, don’t try as hard as you could, or you turn away and don’t try at all. However, the goals you idealize, which if you don’t attain you can’t feel special, still matter to you self-centrically. At the same time others who also value these goals are more likely to out compete you if you slacken your efforts, which usually you’re well aware of. So once you slacken them and fewer goals are reached, your self-identity suffers relative to others in your reference group whose efforts and successes haven’t abated. Since you can’t generate as much effort, you accomplish even less of what you idealize and feel even more inadequate and unworthy, further weakening your ego strength.
Consequently, you feel trepidation about facing adversity, less capable of striving hard for the goals that matter to you, continue to repress memories and impulses that conflict with your self-identity, don’t advance your life, or maybe backslide in at least one or more areas. If the pause continues for any length of time your life stagnates or worse, which depreciates even more the status of your self-identity on which most of your ego strength is based.
*A number of the seminal ideas on which Therapy from the Will is based are borrowed from Arthur Schopenhauer’s transcendental views on the nature and basis of human knowledge. See Bryan Magee’s, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1997), Oxford University Press; Confessions of a Philosopher (1997), Modern Library Paperbacks; and Arthur Schopenhauer’s Essay on the Freedom of the Will (2005), Dover Classics.