Self-esteem And Meaning: A Life Historical Investigation.

Abstract

Although many techniques have been used to investigate self-esteem, studies of this phenomenon can be divided into two rather distinct categories: experimental approaches based on quantitative assessment, and clinical approaches based on informal case material. A review of the literature suggests that both of these strategies have yielded disappointing results. Particularly problematic for both orientations has been the question of how to conceptualize self-esteem as a phenomenon with meaning. The present study represents a break with both of these traditions and an attempt to investigate self-esteem through a systematic but unstructured process of dialogue. Each of twelve subjects was interviewed in two sessions totaling approximately three to four hours. Each was requested to describe a time when he had felt good about himself, and each was questioned extensively about his past and present life. Every subject's account, therefore, was a detailed case history, oriented around a particular incident of self-esteem and providing a context for understanding this incident. In addition, certain concepts were borrowed from the fields of philosophy, semiotics, and linguistics to aid in analyzing the structure of meaning in each subject's account. Nine subjects' cases are reported at length. Each of these cases includes quoted material and commentary, and each is used to raise certain important theoretical issues. Although there were differences from case to case, there were also commonalities across cases; and these seem to betoken a specific pattern of meaning associated with the experience of self-esteem. This pattern is defined by three major elements: (1) Ideology--a readily accessible system of ideals and beliefs in terms of which an experience of self-esteem is initially given meaning; (2) Idealization--a system of memories of important figures from the past demonstrating the ideals which are formalized in ideology; and (3) The Central Conflict--a personal, life-long dilemma which is partially resolved in an experience of self-esteem by the application of the ideals represented idealization and ideology. In addition to these findings, a number of methodological issues are discussed.

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