Home > International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis > Self-Esteem

Esteem for the self consolidates the sense of one's own value or, more mundanely, one's pride. Hence Freud's interest in it in "On Narcissism" (1914c): "One part of self-regard is primary—the residue of infantile narcissism; another part arises out of the omnipotence which is corroborated by experience (the fulfillment of the ego ideal), whilst a third part proceeds from the satisfaction of object-libido" (p. 100). As the effect of ego demands on the "narcissistic" ego ideal and "moral conscience," the feeling of self-esteem is at the origin of repression: "In paraphrenics self-regard is increased, while in the transference neuroses it is diminished" (p. 98). It is nevertheless the narcissistic part that proves to be determinant: when self-esteem is threatened, the result is shame rather than guilt. It therefore depends, in each individual life and in the different psychopathological cases, on the quality of the subject's narcissism and thus on the modalities of the subject's cathexis by and of the object, as it depends for its regulation on its relations with the ego ideal (Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel). All situations of existential crisis shatter it particularly, adolescence being an example, but especially melancholy because, according to Freud (1916-17g), what differentiates it from "normal mourning," over and above the common loss of object that characterizes them both, is the fact that it calls itself into question.

RAYMOND CAHN

See also: Ego ideal; Inferiority, feeling of; "Mourning and melancholia"; Omnipotence of thought; "On Narcissism: An Introduction"; Self-consciousness; Self, the; Suicide.