About Percepts

The thing that sets humans apart from other species is our intellect and the mental abilities that go with it. Whereas with many species much can be hardwired, humans have much more innate flexibility due to the speed with which we can learn and, in turn, incorporate that learning into the way we go about life. In other words, the subjective nature of human existence can vary from generation to generation, and even within generations. Therefore, human beings are infinitely adaptable and the thing that replaces hardwiring in the human sphere is informed judgment. Instead of having hardwired components, humans have the ability to make informed judgments and thus to decide on courses of action rather than repeat predetermined patterns.
 

Most human beings have their personal view of life so rooted in the physical reality that they don’t consider that life is an interpretation - a matter of judgment or opinion. By nature, the societies in which we live reflect an interpretation of what it means to be human. We are constantly judging/interpreting the meaning of input (consciously and subconsciously) and we use these data to judge appropriate actions, or courses of action, and to predict the impact of our actions on our external environment. And since we are all individuals, it means that we desire an individually specific experience of life. No one can tell us exactly what that experience is or how we should get it. We live the type of life that, in our opinion, will work best for us. Life is definitely a judgment call.
 

Judgment is what lies between proof and a guess. The more relevant the data a judgment is based upon, the more chance there is that the judgment will be correct. Likewise, the more in depth, or greater, our understanding of a thing, the more informed the judgments are that we make. Different levels of understanding give rise to different levels of judgment, which in turn give rise to different levels of efficacy, both in terms of interpreting input and successfully integrating ourselves into the world in order to achieve our goals.
 

Human beings are goal achievers and we set goals on many levels - everything from simple things like getting a cup of coffee to life goals that we pursue all our lives. We control our experience of life by setting and achieving goals. There are three basic human functions that allow us to achieve this. Firstly, humans are extremely good learners who not only retain data, but also learn conceptually and in great depth. Secondly, our imagination allows us to formulate goals and, combined with our deductive abilities, devise ways of achieving them. But the thing that makes it all work is informed judgment. Obviously, informed judgment plays a significant role in interpreting input and setting goals, but it is also what enables us to integrate ourselves into the world in a positive fashion to achieve these goals.
 

One of the simplest examples is that of driving. We are able to drive from one location to the next because of the understanding we hold about driving overall (including our own skill levels and the abilities of the vehicle we are driving) and because informed judgment allows us to use these data to interpret input and predict courses of action - to predict what the actions of other motorists mean in relation to us, and to predict the impact of our actions in relation to them. As such, we are able to drive from one location to the next because we can interpret what the actions of other motorists mean in relation to us, and what our actions mean in relation to them, and make the appropriate judgments as to which actions to take to allow us to achieve our goal safely. Every human action over and above basic hardwired responses reflects this process in one form or another.
 

Therefore, on a fundamental level, humans gain understanding of themselves, the world they live in, and the relationship between the two, and then use these data to interpret stimuli and to set and achieve goals. As humans, we are born with the necessary mental abilities to achieve this. The one thing humans aren’t born with is the thing that fuels the system - conceptual understanding of life and self that enables us to interpret meaning and to set and achieve goals in whatever world into which we’ve been born. As such, our formative years represent a massive learning curve as we attempt to gain the necessary understanding that will allow us to live our lives independently.

 Life Concept (LC)
 

One of the things most human beings overlook is that the over-riding thing we are doing all the time is living a life. Therefore, one of the primary functions of the subconscious during formative years is the development of a LC - a conceptual understanding of life that enables us to interpret life-relevant data and set and achieve life goals. The LC in turn gives rise to automatic internal perceptual processes – gearings - that dictate the ways in which we perceive and respond to these stimuli.  Emotional gearings related to life and self-concept factors are primary gearings. Everything else is a secondary gearing. So teaching a child to use the correct utensils at dinner is reinforcing a secondary gearing. To teach the child that their validity as a human being depends on them using the correct utensils would be reinforcing a primary gearing.
 

The Self Concept (SC) is actually a component of the LC. The subjective expressions of our LC are our sense of self and our general mindset (learnt identity). The LC reflects our understanding of three major areas: understanding of ourselves (SC), understanding of the world at large (including other people), and an understanding of the relationship between ourselves and the world at large. Our ability to successfully live our lives is directly related to the veracity and scope of our understanding in these three areas. In other words, we are able to live life only as well as we understand it. For example, an individual raised in a dysfunctional family is going to have a much harder time having interpersonal relationships because their understanding of relationships is based on a negative relationship model, giving rise to false data, and/ or a lack of relevant data. Our LC, by nature, gives rise to a specific way of living life. Most people don’t realize that they are living life a specific way and that living it another way, based on better understanding in the three key areas, may enable them to have a much more fulfilling life.
 

Overall, the LC reflects the answer to the question “What does it mean to be alive as myself in this world?” The word “alive” refers to life and relates to our human side, whereas “in this world” obviously relates to our external environment and “as myself” relates to our individual side. These are the three major areas we need to gain understanding of in order to be able to judge life level data and to set life level goals that reflect our view of ourselves as both humans and individuals, the world around us, and our relationship to it. I will go into LC development later in this article but one important thing to note here is that the LC sets the overall parameters for our lives. Therefore, the way we interpret any aspect of life, and the goals we set, will fall within LC parameters.
 

The point overall is that our sense of self, the quality of our lives, and the nature of our collective impact on each other and the planet directly correlate with our understanding of the human condition. Therein lies the problem. Human beings are sadly lacking when it comes to understanding themselves. Broadly speaking, the fundamental reason why is that the biases we develop by adopting externally based LC’s, and the perceptual blocks we have due to a lack of essential data make it extremely difficult to truly interpret human life. Psychology researchers have those same biases. For example, ask yourself why chronic low self-esteem (SE) is not labeled as a psychopathology in the DSM, even though it is a highly debilitating condition, an aberration that does not need to exist, and one that reflects misinterpretations of the self. Could it be that to accept low SE as something that shouldn’t exist ultimately leads us to question aspects of our society that give rise to it? Could it be that societal biases give rise to a ‘SE blind’ spot in researchers that results in underestimation of the impact of this mental-emotional state on behavioral expression? Take anorexia for example. Although chronic low SE is highly correlated with diagnosis of anorexia and can account for all the major symptomology associated with the disorder, it tends to be listed as a comorbidity rather than a causal factor.
 

If you don’t think that biases in psychology researchers are in play, consider this. One of the most commonly used SE scales is the Rosenburg Self-Esteem Inventory (RSI). This test is more than 40 years old and is a very superficial measure of self-concept, and yet our current understanding of the ‘characteristics’ that define low or high SE have been decided by tests such as the RSI. In other words, if individuals that score high on the RSI exhibit a certain characteristic, then it becomes accepted that it is a characteristic of high SE. No one puts forward the view that maybe what we read as high SE is in fact the high end of low SE, in true human terms. I recently discovered a prime example of this in a popular psychology text. It was an explanation of why people with high SE might practice for an upcoming task less if being observed. The answer was that perhaps if they failed at the task, they could cite the fact that they hadn’t practiced very hard – a practice known as self-handicapping. In other words, the Psychology community exhibits an acceptance that individuals with both high and low SE self-handicap. Why should we accept that both these groups employ self-handicapping, a behavior that fits much better with the existence of low rather than high SE? Why? Maybe it’s because tests like the RSI tell us they do!
 

What makes understanding the human condition more difficult is the fact that Psychology, the discipline we look to in order to explain the human condition in expert orientated societies, has in many ways hit a wall. To try and understand a complex mechanism like the human mental/emotional system by giving subjects questionnaires or by running experiments in labs doesn’t do it - it only scrapes the surface. To truly understand human behavior, it is necessary to observe it being expressed first hand and over time. Otherwise, researchers are trying to piece apart a complex mechanism using self-reported data after the fact, a daunting task to say the least. Experimental and clinical psychology have yet to engage in an empirical approach that allows for study of the LC as a continuum across time, and so do not detect the existence and impact of unconscious gearings.
 

The Human Perspective
 

Our understanding of the human condition is the governing factor in human expression and evolution, but most importantly, it also sets the backdrop against which we understand ourselves as individuals. For example, our LC contains data related to being human. If our LC contains false human data, or a lack of relevant human data, this impacts negatively on our ability to develop a positive sense of ourselves as individuals. The more positive our view of ourselves as humans becomes, the more positive our view of ourselves as individuals can become, and therefore the more fulfilling our lives can become. The fundamental thing all humans desire is to have a fulfilling life, whatever that may mean individually.
 

If some of the following seems very basic, remember that when a human being is constructing a life concept, they build it from the ground up, so basics count. For example, humans have the ability to overcome many of the problems that face this world. All it would take would be for us to work together toward a common good and we could do miraculous things. So why don’t we? Because we do not have simple functional race consciousness built into our LC’s. Understanding that you are a human being and learning race consciousness are not the same thing.
 

Human beings reflect a higher order life force expressed through a physical/mental being. Therefore, we are physical beings that think and feel.
 

It makes little difference what you believe our life force is. If you believe it is a spirit then fine. What we are examining is the mental/emotional side of humans so the nature of the driving force is not a major consideration at this point.
 

The human mind has two major areas - conscious and subconscious. We have awareness of ourselves and the world around us in the conscious mind and the conscious mind is the point of control for humans. The subconscious handles automatic functions. Functionally the subconscious is the ‘Automatic Mind’ because it automatically perpetuates those things that don’t require conscious involvement. For example, as you are reading this article, your mind is interpreting these symbols. In every conversation you have, your mind is interpreting the sounds you are hearing, but you aren’t consciously aware of doing so. As it is the automatic mind that perpetuates the LC we have adopted, it is important to understand the interplay between think and feel.
 

The purpose of life on a species level is to evolve, and human beings have great potential to evolve. The only reason why we haven’t realized our potential is that we cannot truly become proper humans until we understand the truth about being human. Only when our LC reflects the truth about human existence can we begin to evolve as only then will the full range of human abilities come into play. A simple example is objective ability - the ability to apply objective reasoning to a problem, or even more importantly, to ourselves and subjective life. This is truly an amazing ability, and yet at this point in time humans are still so governed by their emotions that it is grossly underutilized. This tends to be explained as a human characteristic. “Humans will always be at the mercy of their emotions”. Of course, this is just one possible explanation of this phenomenon. A lack of understanding of the human condition is another.
 

On a personal level, the purpose of life is obviously to be an individual. It is difficult to argue with nature that made us individuals, or the fact that we all experience a totally individual experience of life. Your purpose is to grow and evolve as an individual by expressing yourself in life in a manner that allows you to fulfill your individual desires for life. To be philosophical, it is to add your own unique influence to the overall tapestry of human existence. Again, the ability to truly do this only comes into play when we fully understand ourselves as humans and have a LC that reflects that. This includes having an individually based LC. The LC is supposed to reflect the reality, both human and individual. We all approach life from a purely individual perspective and therefore the only perspective that truly works for humans is an individually based one. For every instance that our adopted LC does not reflect the reality of ourselves, either as an individual or a human, we lose efficacy in some form or another and the quality of life diminishes. Human societies on this planet tend to be externally based. What this means is that the criteria we measure ourselves against in terms of personal validity are societally based external standards. In other words, the focal point in terms of validity is societally orientated rather than being individually orientated. This may not seem all that important but the truth is that this is the primary reason why humans lose conscious control over many sub-conscious processes. We adopt a LC based on the belief that external judgments of validity over-ride personal ones. Or to put it in psychology terms, we believe in an external locus of control so naturally the power of self-judgment suffers.
 

Some people misinterpret an individually based approach as being negatively self-centered. In reality, any balanced life concept gives rise to a moral component or rules for living within a community. The approach reflected here is an individual approach based on self-respect, both as an individual and a human being. Therefore, as a human animal that needs the environment to exist, and as a human obviously designed to be social, it is based on respect for both the environment and the need to positively integrate into the world at large. External respect and an individually based approach are not disparate. The point to note is that it is possible to raise children with the ability to interact with the world in a positive fashion whilst still maintaining the individual perspective and the life efficacy that goes with it. However, it is not possible to do this with the current level of understanding of ourselves as humans.
 

Attitude
 

An attitude can be defined as a way of perceiving or approaching a thing based on understanding and/or experience of that thing. Human beings are creatures of attitude or approach in that any body of knowledge we hold gives rise to an attitude that reflects it. Therefore, the LC gives rise to a Life Attitude (LA). Our LA has significant effect on the way we interpret our world and ourselves, and therefore also on efficacy. Few humans realize how much their attitude, or approach, to anything can influence efficacy and outcomes. For example, if an optimist and a pessimist were to attempt a task for which they had equal abilities, which one would you bet on to finish first? Many human beings fail to achieve goals that they are capable of achieving because of a bad or misdirected attitude.
 

The significance of the LA is that as a reflection of our LC beliefs, it impacts on all we do because in the same way that the LC is the over-riding conceptual understanding we hold, the LA it gives rise to is the over-riding attitude. To put it another way, our LA is a way of approaching life given rise to by our LC, and therefore represents a bias to interpret what we experience in line with our LC beliefs. We are not aware of our LA as such. What we are aware of is its subjective expression which is the nature of our general mindset. Once formed, all of our expression and experience is by way of the LC/LA.
 

Belief
 

The striking thing that humans in this time have not grasped is that life is a perceived reality. In other words, our subconscious perpetuates whatever version of reality we believe in and it has amazing power to do so. What we experience as life is our own personal reality as perpetuated by our subconscious. It feels concrete but in fact it reflects an interpretation of life and self, an opinion that may or may not reflect the truth. This includes the ability to mold our own personal makeup to fit with a particular learned identity. As I mentioned in the introduction, the ability of the human mental/emotional system to promote a version of reality that is disparate from what we would regard as obvious aspects of accepted reality is demonstrated by the expressions of anorexia nervosa, in that anorexic girls who are life threateningly malnourished still perceive themselves as having to lose weight.
 

It makes no difference if we are all raised through the same environment and taught the same LC data. All will have a uniquely individual view based on the same data because the LC ultimately reflects what those data mean in relation to the individual. Our LC is not a pure reflection of what we were taught. It reflects our interpretation of what we were taught, and that interpretation by nature has a significant individual component.
 

Most of us have heard the statement “you are what you believe you are.” This is true in relation to our LC, both as human beings and individuals. Belief is the true power in humans. Therefore, your LC does not simply reflect what you were taught. It reflects what you believed! During our formative years, it is personal belief in what we are learning about life that gives it subconscious effect and causes it to become part of the LC. It is only because we believe in externally based LC’s that individual belief loses power.
 

Learnt identity / Front
 

One aspect of humans that is not fully recognized is the ability to present a “front.” A front is a way of presenting something that represents a false or incomplete picture. However, I am not talking about fronting whereby a person will consciously present an image to the world. Indeed, we all can do this and it can be positive or negative. If the person presenting the front is doing so to gain something from you in a fraudulent manner, then it is obviously negative. But the fireman, who in reality is fearful for his life, but presents a confident front to those he is trying to rescue in order to facilitate the rescue, is doing a positive thing. We develop many social behavior patterns whereby we present ourselves in a particular way in line with accepted social norms. In other words, presenting a front can be positive or negative depending on the application and there are many positive expressions of front in human behavior.
 

What I am talking about instead is a subconsciously generated front. Life is a perceived reality in that the way life appears and feels may not reflect the actual physical reality. Therefore, the way we appear to ourselves may or may not reflect the reality. If our view of self does not reflect the reality, then what we perceive as self is a front - a false projection of the type of person we are. The person who deals with negative energy by being very busy but puts it down to being highly motivated is a good example. The highly motivated person type is a front presented to the self (and the world) to disguise the true picture.
 

This is reflected externally as the type of person we present to the world as ‘self.’ Again, I am referring to presentation that is automatic, not consciously contrived. For example, one of the best defenses to the problem of emotional vulnerability associated with low SE is to be a non-confrontational type of person who gets on with people. This may include being witty because humor helps to generate a positive response from other people. Therefore, some individuals with low SE present this type of persona whether it is a reflection of their true nature or not. The point is that this type of front is related to needs generated by negative LC gearings rather than positive human expression. So even ‘personality traits’ can reflect the existence of negative LC factors rather than being reflections of true personality.
 

This trend is reflected in behavior patterns. All humans develop behavior patterns and they are supposed to facilitate expression in a positive way. But individuals with low SE, or in fact any negative gearing related to the self, will have behavior patterns that are related to managing the impact of the negative gearings and to keeping them suppressed (although to the individual it will probably appear as “just the way I like to live my life”).
 

And of course, behavior patterns include ways of thinking, including cognitive patterns related to managing negative impact. The point is that every negative factor that becomes associated with the self gives rise to behavior patterns (ways of thinking, feeling, and acting) that are necessary to support the suppression of these factors. For every behavior pattern that develops out of a need to deal with the negative impact of a LC gearing, the individual’s range of expression diminishes. They become less involved with living life and more involved with maintaining it in some kind of positive fashion. For example, during formative years we all have to answer the SE question. Those that have positive SE have it because they have resolved the question in some positive fashion. They can therefore move on in life. However, a person who develops low SE does so because they have been unable to positively and effectively answer the SE question. Therefore, the SE question has to be answered over and over again situationally, even if they are not consciously aware of doing so. For example, a person with positive SE that enters a novel social situation has only to process data related to the surroundings - personal interest is the fundamental drive. But when a person with low SE enters the same situation, a significant proportion of the data that they are processing are related to answering SE related questions. In other words, maintaining a balance becomes the fundamental primary drive, even if it isn’t recognized consciously by the individual.
 

As a result, many people with chronic low SE are forced to be so involved with maintaining life that there is little time left for individual expression. Of course, from the outside it is very difficult to see that. How much a person’s life reflects personal expression is difficult to tell from the outside. However, it can also be difficult to tell from the inside because of the front that is presented to us consciously.
 

At the beginning of this article I stated that “there are several factors that have significant impact on the way we perceive and interpret both the world and ourselves, and these in turn have significant impact on our ability to understand the human condition. Sometimes the ‘truth’ is right in front of us but we simply do not recognize it.”
 

So what are the chances that you have already seen data relevant to yourself but haven’t recognized them? For one thing, this article reflects an individually based approach to human life. You probably have a societally based approach. We interpret data by weighing them up against our experience and understanding of a thing. And we do so in a way that conforms to our LC beliefs. Therefore, we do not automatically interpret correct meaning from a LC different than our own. Instead, data will be misperceived as meaning something else or simply as making no sense or being wrong. So in the little that you have read so far, you may have already encountered personally relevant data that appeared to have no significant meaning to you because they reflect a LC different than your own and were therefore interpreted by your subconscious as having no personal relevance.
 

One of the primary reasons why data can be interpreted as having no personal relevance is due to application issues. Just because data have relevance to an individual doesn’t automatically mean that the individual can perceive the relevance. Sometimes it is necessary to understand more about the data in question, and the way they apply to the specific situation, before the relevance can be recognized.
 

So in reading this article, you have already had some reaction as to its possible validity but in part that reaction will be influenced by how much you perceive the personal relevance of it, whether you consciously recognize it or not. Since there are not sufficient data in what you have read so far to deduce much in the way of personal application, how much do you think your estimation of the validity of what you have read so far might change if you and I were to sit down one on one and I explained how the data laid out here apply to your specific situation? The chances are that if we did so, you would come to view what you have read so far in a very different way. It’s a Perceived Reality.
 

Life Concept (LC) Development
 

I have defined the LC as our understanding of life and self in relation to the world in which we live. From the individual perspective, it is reflected in the answers to questions like “who, what, and why am I?”, and “what is life, what is its purpose, and what are its rules or boundaries?” (Questions relating to life and self are reflective in that they can only truly be answered in terms of each other). Essentially, we ask the same types of questions about life and self that we ask when attempting to understand anything. What is it, what is its purpose, how does it work, and so on. Obviously, data related to these questions can come at all stages of development. And although we all answer the same basic questions, the way we come to the answers is individually specific. Overall, although we are born with an inherent identity, we essentially want to know what type of person we are supposed to be. What makes a valid human? Our LC reflects our answer to this question and our SE level reflects an estimation of how well we believe we measure up to it.
 

The LC can be described as our learnt identity in that its subjective expression is the type of person we turn out to be. We may always be the individual we were born as but the way we think and feel and act in any given situation is ultimately determined by the learnt identity. As such, it is an “overlay” in that it reflects an acquired person type when we are inherently a person type already. If the learnet identity reflects the truth, then this is not a problem. However, if there is a false sense of identity, it is a problem because the subconscious then has to promote a view of the self that is disparate from the reality.  This robs the individual of significant control over their lives. In a perfect world, the individual and the LC should fit together without any clash. However, the further from the truth the LC is, the more difficult the overlay becomes to maintain.
 

This also applies to our human side because any desirable human stereotype that a society gives rise to by nature reflects an interpretation of what it means to be human. If the LC contains false understanding of the human side, this puts the LC and the human being at odds. For example, many religions believe that, not only is sex before marriage wrong, but that even to have sexually related thoughts is wrong and therefore these thoughts must be suppressed. Unfortunately, the onset of puberty brings with it a cascade of hormones that promote these types of thoughts. To suppress them means fighting against a human design characteristic. In other words, the LC and the human being are at odds.
 

The development of the LC is hardwired so it would be foolish to think that data related to its development aren’t in play from the start. Even before a child develops the rudimentary skills that enable it to begin to gather actual data, environment has an impact. To a very young child, the immediate home environment is life. For example, whether the home environment is relaxed or stressed will have some impact. Although small infants do not consciously register or understand the impact of their environment, it still impacts on their experience of, and therefore their view of, life.
 

We are hardwired to develop the LC so there is an active, but not necessarily consciously recognized, desire to understand life and self. So many problems could be dealt with if humans recognized LC development and provided their children with the appropriate data at the appropriate stages of development. For example, if you are aware of the fact that your child is automatically gathering data related to their personal validity, the last thing you would want is for them to get it from something like media. Therefore, from the earliest possible age, you should teach your children that they should not judge their validity by the types of external standards the media presents. If you don’t think this is important and you live in the USA, take a little time and find out how many American women feel inadequate because they believe they don’t measure up to the stereotypical female phenotype. While you are at it, find out at what age they became aware of it and where the information came from. In contrast, next time you are in the supermarket, have a look around and see how many of the people look like TV stars or supermodels. Having a female population gain some sense of their validity by weighing themselves up against a standard that in no way reflects the human norm makes no sense.
 

As small children without the cognitive ability to understand the world by ourselves, we depend totally on adult interpretations of the world, not as an interpretation of reality, but as reality. Conversely, everything else isn’t. Thus, the fundamental purpose of the subconscious becomes to perpetuate the believed version of reality at the expense of all others. Unfortunately, externally based perspectives mean we just become narrow minded and lose the ability to develop on a LC level. This doesn’t make sense when you consider that human beings are capable of learning and growing their entire lives. Why should beings capable of learning about life and self across the entire lifespan be locked into a LC that began developing even before they developed cognitive ability? Even more, why be locked into something that in reality reflected someone’s opinion of life, not necessarily life itself? Again, an externally based approach says that this is just the way it is in humans. The approach you are experiencing here refutes this. It is simply that we have not learnt enough about the truth of humans as yet, and therefore find it difficult to face the requirements necessary to avoid this. It is difficult to teach our children the truth about life if we don’t know what it is ourselves.
 

One of the fundamental ways we are shaped by our LC relates to the human characteristic that we actively seek positive emotion related to the self and conversely seek to avoid or resolve negative emotion related to the self. As a result, if a particular behavioral expression is labeled as having a negative connotation in relation to the self, and as a consequence has a negative emotion associated with it, then an individual will not desire that particular form of expression, not because it isn’t something they could enjoy or do successfully, but because they wish to avoid experiencing the negative emotion associated with it. For example, I was raised in a strict, fear based, religious environment. Once the fear of committing sin became a part of my LC, all that my parents had to do was label something a sin and it was in effect gone from my expression. Conversely, the emotion of personal validity is extremely desirable for humans. Therefore, if we are taught that a particular form of personal expression reflects validity, then that behavior becomes desirable, even if only to experience the validity feed associated with it.
 

Because of this need to resolve negative factors related to the self, any self-relevant questions, doubts, or fears not answered in one stage of development are automatically passed on to the next. If they are not answered and remain as part of the LC, they still require resolution, even if we are not consciously aware of it. This is why many people set and achieve personally relevant goals that they believe will be fulfilling, only to find that there is still something missing (This is especially true of those with low SE). One example would be a person who believes that a more exciting job would make their life more fulfilling but still doesn’t feel satisfied, even though the new job is all that they wanted it to be. This occurs because the need to resolve subconsciously held fears or self-doubts means that resolution of them becomes an unnoticed attachment to life goals. The sense of something still missing comes because although the primary goal was achieved, the subconsciously held fears/doubts weren’t resolved.
 

I have referred to self-relevant emotions with regards to LC gearings. Emotion is a general term and it is not necessary to be more precise than this at this time. The important thing to note is that whether we call them self-relevant emotions or emotions of personal validity, these responses are on the deepest human level and are very strong. Therefore, the desire to avoid the negative and seek the positive is very strong. In fact, human beings will often go to great lengths to rationalize the irrational because they want to maintain a validity feed. Overall, this characteristic to seek the positive and avoid the negative is one of the primary ways in which we are shaped to fit a learnt identity.
 

Through-out this article I refer to a lack of understanding of the human condition. You the reader may disagree. However, answer this question. When you were growing up, how many of the answers to the following questions were you taught?
 

What is the purpose of emotion?
How do you control emotions?
How do you judge personal validity?
What is an objective approach and how do you apply it?
 

This list could go on for a very long time. The point here is that these questions and all that would follow them relate to aspects of life that you and I deal with very day of our lives. They are totally relevant to everyday subjective living. How many of them can you answer? For one thing, your ability to apply an objective approach is a major factor governing the way you are interpreting this article.
 

The Power of LC Senses
 

Essentially humans do three things - they think, feel, and act. Of these, it is feel that dominates. The quality of our lives is reflected in the way we feel. The unhappy billionaire is not doing as well in real life as the happy pauper. In terms of LC development, it is important to recognize the power of some of our feelings. One of these is the power of senses related to primary gearings. When our subconscious interprets meaning, it gives rise to both cognition and a sense - understanding of the stimulus and a sense of what it means. For example, in anorexia, it is the strength of the sense of needing to lose weight, or of being overweight, that overrides cognitive and visual data. It is incredibly strong. We all have those same strong senses in us and they can override cognition in all of us. However, we tend to notice them only when we encounter an aberrant condition like anorexia. In reality, they are in play on some level in all of us all the time.
 

A major factor in understanding human life is that we have a sense of anything we experience. For instance, a person can be confused because they are genuinely confused by something, or they can be confused because the particular stimulus has been interpreted as threatening on some level and avoiding awareness of that conflict evokes a sense of confusion. Same outcome, different cause. Similarly, if having read this article you conclude that there is nothing personally relevant in it, you could have reached that conclusion because you had evaluated it cognitively and found that in fact there was nothing personally relevant in it, or because your subconscious did not interpret personally relevant data as relevant, and therefore give rise to a sense of relevance.
 

This again represents another powerful mechanism by which the subconscious can shape our reality. Human beings are expressed through meaning rather than data. It is not what we believe life is, but rather what we believe it means, that dictates the way we respond to it. Therefore, to a significant degree, that which we perceive as reality is simply what we sense it to be. As such, the power of the LC is evident since it sets the parameters by which we sense aspects of life and self.

Suppression 

The human mind has great suppressive ability. Although widely recognized, this ability tends to be viewed from a narrow perspective. For example, we tend to associate suppression with negative emotions, or the impact of negative events, that the individual is unable to assimilate. Child abuse is a prime example. Often the abuse is “missing” from conscious awareness until the memories are uncovered for one reason or another. The fundamental purposes of this type of suppression are protection and efficacy. For example, in immediate crisis situations, individuals will often act with great efficacy until the situation is over and then have all the emotional reactions associated with the event. This is short term suppression. On a longer-term basis, we can suppress negative events that have impact on the self that we cannot resolve at that time (resolving a thing means being able to put it into a personally workable perspective that allows the individual to carry on with their life in a positive fashion that is not colored by the negative event). This is a protective mechanism that allows us to pursue life without having to consciously confront negative aspects related to the self that would be highly debilitating. In fact, one of the functions of the subconscious in LC development is to give us the best conscious experience we can have given our adopted LC. Therefore, on a LC level, any negative life/self gearings will involve suppression. In fact, it is this mechanism that enables the human race to proceed in the absence of the full human picture. However, the point still is that if the LC properly reflects the reality, there is nothing to suppress.  

Some would argue that the existence of a negative gearing is not always suppressed. They may cite the fact that many people with low SE openly acknowledge that they have low SE. Whilst this may simply be an expression of self-handicapping, it doesn’t matter here. Indeed, there are limits to what can be suppressed from our awareness. However, in the case of SE, although the individuals may acknowledge low SE, they have no real idea of how deep it runs or how significantly it impacts on their life. In other words, the approach is, if it can’t be suppressed from awareness, then at least diminish the impact. The Cost of Suppression
 

The cost of suppression appears to be grossly misunderstood. For example, I have stated that there is nothing to suppress if the LC is based on the truth of the individual. The existence of self-relevant, negative, LC factors that need to be suppressed is aberrant and therefore is only achieved at a significant cost to the individual. Suppression is not as passive as it may appear, and just because a thing is suppressed beneath conscious awareness doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For example, a disturbing memory of childhood abuse may be suppressed, but the individual is still disturbed by the memory, they just don’t notice it as such. On a fundamental level, the primary cost of suppression is that it requires energy. Instead of our energy being directed towards living life, some of it becomes involved in supporting the suppression or maintaining a balance in life.
 

Suppression on a LC level relates to the fact that, although we are inherently a person type, adopting a LC means adopting a particular human model as our learnt identity. It is the learnt identity that we are expressed through. Therefore, the subconscious shapes us to fit with the learnt identity. Any aspect of us as individuals or humans that doesn’t fit with the learnt identity is in effect suppressed because it does not get expressed or acknowledged, at least not in a pure form. However, suppression on a LC level is much more involved than simply blocking “inappropriate behavior” and reinforcing “appropriate behavior.” It is much more than blocking the desire to act in a particular way. To suppress a desire/behavior, the perceptual characteristics that gave rise to it, and cognitive processes associated with it, also need to be impacted. Any desire/behavior reflects perception (interpretation of data), and cognition. Suppression of any kind means that the way we feel, and the way we think, changes.
 

Conscious impact is also necessary in relation to suppressive maintenance. Humans can think and learn extremely well. We have perceptive intelligence (perceptive refers to our ability to sense meaning and intelligence refers to cognitive ability - both of these combine under the general heading of intelligence but they represent two distinctly different phenomena which work in tandem but are not always equal) and we are extremely good learners. There are many data points within our basic awareness that, when put together, can show us a different perspective. Seeing an overall picture from multiple data points reflects drawing meaning about the relationship between the points and their relationship to the overall picture. We draw these types of meaning automatically when we learn, so it is important for the subconscious to not only control what we think about and how, but also to control the types of meaning we draw so that we do not notice suppressive characteristics or deduce/uncover the existence of something being suppressed. It is not as difficult to block external input that challenges the LC or points to suppression of a particular event. The most common defense is a sense of being under personal attack. This usually does the trick. But even if it doesn’t, reacting to data with a sense of confusion probably will.
 

Consider also that any negative gearing generates negative energy which requires some form of expression, but in a way that doesn’t appear to the individual as the expression of negative energy. One of the most common ways to deal with negative energy is to go ‘faster’ in life in general - be very busy most of the time. The busy lifestyle can easily be rationalized by the individual by simply viewing themselves as highly motivated.
 

Understanding the impact of LC suppression on the conscious state is vitally important. The conscious mind is the point of control for humans. We are specific beings expressed in a general world. The conscious mind is where the individual and the world at large meet. It is where we have our awareness of both and it is where we have the ability, or lack thereof, to understand and control both sides, to control life. Life is an active experience. If we do not control the experience, it controls us. Therefore, understanding the conscious impact of LC gearings and suppression is vital to understanding the human condition.
 

Any form of suppression has a conscious component by which it can be detected, but most people don’t know enough about the conscious impact of suppression to detect it. For example, there are significant abstract factors related to human development. If you understand these abstract factors, you can pinpoint many subconscious aspects related to the individual by way of what’s missing. For everything that is suppressed, something goes missing from the conscious state. Overall, the cost of suppression on all levels is a decrease in overall life efficacy
 

Non-emotion/Blank screen – the Mind Killer
 

One of the most formidable ways in which the subconscious controls cognition is by way of a phenomenon known as an abstract sense (eg., non-emotion). Few psychologists seem to have caught on to the fact that, if we are beings capable of abstract thought, then there must be abstract senses. An abstract sense is one of the prime ways the subconscious dissuades us from pursuing thought lines outside of LC boundaries.
 

   The importance of an abstract sense is that it causes the individual to stop pursuing a thought line by way of an extremely strong sense that there is nothing there to be seen (non-emotion), coupled with a view that virtually anything else is more desirable to focus on. The same could be achieved with a fear reaction, but a fearful response would denote that there was something there to be feared which defeats the purpose of suppression. As a result, the most common experience of an abstract sense is that of attempting to think about something that evokes an abstract sense, only to find some time later that you had begun thinking about something else and not noticed. You re-focus on the point only to have the same process happen again. Words do not do the power of an abstract sense justice. It is a powerful force.
 

The cognitive representation of a non-emotion is a “blank screen.” Most people have experienced their mind going blank momentarily and put it down to a random event of little significance. Although it may occur randomly, there is a subconscious mechanism that can give rise to this phenomenon. A blank screen replaces context. The way the human mind is structured means that we draw meaning by way of context. For instance, any stimulus is interpreted/judged by way of context, context being the understanding we hold about the particular stimulus or event. As such, a blank screen can be described as a lack of context. We are not consciously aware of context, but it is what allows the process of judgment which is fundamental to cognition. Therefore, the process of judgment and the ability to draw meaning are blocked. Again, words do not do this phenomenon justice. I have sat in front of an extremely intelligent, educated person and observed them being unable to draw simple meaning between two data points as a result of a blank screen. No attempt to explain the meaning I was trying to get across to the person had any effect. However, the person interpreted the meaning as soon as I laid out the relevant context.
 

The importance of the non-emotion/blank screen phenomena is the incredible ability it has to shape the way we think by preventing us from following specific thought lines and from drawing certain types of meaning without ever drawing attention to the process. Everyone, including you the reader, experiences this phenomenon in some form or another. It simply goes unnoticed by way of its abstract nature.
 

Self Perpetuation
 

One of the over-riding characteristics of the human mental /emotional system is that it is self-reinforcing. Take perception for example. Perception is structured awareness and the structure comes from the understanding we hold of whatever it is we are experiencing. To this end, structured awareness gives rise to a biased attitude or approach. In other words, selective attention. For example, the propensity to draw negative meaning from self–relevant stimuli is a commonly observed expression of low self-esteem (SE). This often occurs even if the stimulus contains no negative content. For this propensity to exist, individuals with low SE have to be very selective to what stimuli they attend. For instance, more often than not, there will be a lot of data inherent in the situation to suggest that their interpretation is wrong, or at least heavily biased. These data must be overlooked, and selective attention allows for this. Another way of describing this phenomenon is that the subconscious exerts significant control over what we do or don’t notice. This bias to notice data that reinforce our believed view and overlook data that don’t is, in and of itself, a powerful reinforcing mechanism.
 

When a specific stimulus is experienced, because the perceptual view reflects our beliefs about the stimulus, then so does our reaction to it. Our biased perceptual view gives rise to a biased reaction/sense of the stimulus. LC senses are powerful and in both directions. In other words, the sense of reality associated with data that reinforce the LC is as absolute as the sense of unimportance we get in relation to data that contradict the LC. Therefore, the selective view we get from structured awareness is reinforced as reality by evoking powerful senses that back up the specific view and give it a sense of reality. Overall, this adds up to a very powerful self-reinforcing system and explains the difficulties associated with treating conditions like low SE and its associated expressions like anorexia nervosa.

 Self-Esteem
 

Self-esteem is our sense of personal validity in relation to the world, and therefore other people, and impacts on all aspects of our experience of life. It arises from our belief as to how well we think we measure up to the standards our LC/society sets for validity. Senses and emotions related to SE are some of the strongest we experience. Low SE is related to our individual self. Although we are human, we are individual humans so even body type can be perceived as invalid since we do not all have the same body type. And although we can develop a general sense of personal invalidity, it impacts across the board. As with any negative gearing related to self, low SE impacts on both the way we think and the way we feel.
 

Since the ability to successfully integrate ourselves into the world depends in part on  having an understanding of ourselves in relation to the world, it is easy to see the functional importance of SE. An understanding of the validity of our person type, which includes the validity of our desires, judgments, and actions, in relation to the world at large is a vital component in enabling us to make the judgments necessary to integrate into the world successfully. In other words, we need some idea of how the world is going to react to us as people (and therefore to our actions) to be able to successfully judge appropriate ways to express ourselves.
 

Many of the phenomena described thus far are highlighted in a psychopathology like chronic low SE. (When talking about low SE in this section I am essentially referring to chronic low SE. The reason for this is that extremes often demonstrate points more clearly. However, be it defined as chronic low SE or situational low SE, the fundamentals are the same. Only the intensity varies). Low SE is an aberrant condition in that it reflects misinterpretation and does not need to exist. It also gives rise to much more negative impact than psychology currently recognizes. Hence, low SE is a psychopathology by definition, if not by ranking. Click to view- Association Between Eating Disorders and Low Self-esteem - a Meta Analysis Study
 

What doesn’t appear to be understood is the impact of low SE. There are many ways self-doubt can be evoked in humans, and the self-doubt can center on any major facet of an individual, or on an individual overall. For example, as a child I was taught a LC that I did not understand. I could not sense the meaning in it that adults around me appeared to sense. Later in life, I learned that I could not make sense of it because in reality it didn’t make sense. But at the time, the only conclusion I could arrive at was that my personal perception of life was faulty - that I could not interpret meaning the way others could. This was self-doubt related to cognitive and perceptual aspects of myself. But earlier I had been taught (the basis of my LC) the religious premise that human beings are flawed and weak which gave rise to a generalized lack of belief in myself.
 

Low SE is a highly debilitating condition. Whether we have self-doubt generally or self-doubt related to specific aspects of ourselves, it has significant impact on our abilities overall. For example, if you doubt the veracity of personal perception (the way you interpret meaning) then you can never be sure if what you are doing is what it appears to be. It could be that an idea that appeared to be acceptable to you would be unacceptable to other people. If you doubt the veracity of your personal view of life, then how can you tell? It is for this reason that individuals with low SE often second guess themselves. Overall, we all answer the SE question but the way we come to the answer is individually specific. So, although we may group people together as having low SE, and although they will share general characteristics, they will still have an individually specific SE configuration.
 

A major cognitive change in relation to low SE is a change in overall mindset or approach to life. We have all seen examples of the power of mindset. There are motivational people actively employed all over the world who essentially teach people to have a more aggressive approach to the things they wish to achieve. By definition, human life is aggressive. Life is an active experience. By aggressive I am referring to the human characteristic that, as learners, we control our experience of life by learning about it and then using the knowledge to control it. Belief in our personal validity (including validity of desires, cognitions, and perception) allows this process to happen and gives us the power to control our lives. Therefore, positive SE gives rise to an aggressive approach, one based on belief in personal ability and the view that life is a challenge that we can meet. Humans are supposed to have an aggressive approach.
 

Because self-doubt robs an individual of the power to control their experience of life directly, low SE gives rise to a defensive approach to life and self. Individuals with positive SE tend to think in terms of what they know and can do. Individuals with low SE tend to think in terms of what they don’t know and can’t do. For example, a person with positive SE makes a judgment and then acts on it without a problem because, although the judgment reflected personal desire, perception, interpretation of data and so on, they do not have doubt related to the process. Individuals with low SE have the opposite. They do doubt their ability to do the process successfully, so they are concerned with “what have I missed?”
 

One of the things that underpin both aggressive and defensive approaches is our sense of where the power lies (locus of control). The more positive our sense of self, the more it feels like it lies within us. The more negative our sense of self, the more it feels like it lies outside us. Human beings are supposed to have an internal locus of control, so low SE naturally takes us out of the proper state of living.
 

Suppression Related to Self-Esteem
 

Regardless of what configuration of low SE an individual develops, SE is a major component of our sense of self, and since the one thing we are doing all the time is being ourselves, then it is in play all the time. The development of low SE means the introduction of a negative factor into our sense of self and therefore, to some extent, being ourselves becomes a negative experience. Since it is the function of the subconscious to suppress negative self-factors related to the self, then low SE means some degree of suppression of self. For example, if as a person you believe you lack validity, then in a way the purpose of life becomes to not be yourself in order to avoid the inevitable negative reactions to your “invalid” expressions. But how do you give an individual the sense that they are not actually being themselves? To a significant degree, this is achieved by viewing life from an observer perspective. However, the thing that makes it all work is a sense of detachment from the process of life – a sense that the individual is not the prime mover in life.
 

In the case of low SE, this is vitally important because of the defensive approach to life to which low SE gives rise. Human life is an aggressive experience by nature. If a human being has a totally defensive approach, they are in fact negated. So, it is necessary for individuals with low SE to view life from the observer perspective so that they don’t sense their personal involvement in aggressive actions necessary for life.
 

The same can be said in relation to perception. As young children, we interpret meaning directly off the way things appear to us. In other words, stimuli impact directly on our individual perception and what we experience is a purely personal interpretation. However, lack of belief in our validity as individuals means a lack of belief in our personal view of the world and ourselves. If we lack belief in the validity of our perception, then we doubt the validity of meaning we draw from it. Therefore, it is no longer a good thing to react to life off the way it appears to us - to react purely as ourselves. Thus, it appears to individuals with low SE that they are not actually reacting off their personal view of life and self because of the sense of detachment that comes from the observer perspective. Of course, the reality is that we react off the way things appear to us all our lives. Even the factors that give rise to low SE reflect personal interpretation. Human beings cannot escape the fact that they live their lives through their personal perspective no matter how much they conform to external standards but viewing life from the observer perspective certainly does disguise it. Disguise is one of the ways in which the subconscious controls our experience of life. Life is a perceived reality and making one thing appear to be another is a powerful subconscious tool. For instance, human beings can, within themselves, rationalize irrational behavior. In other words, the irrational behavior is disguised as/appears to be something that makes sense. This is very important in relation to getting our awareness to conform to our LC parameters, especially when you consider that subconscious elements have conscious representations which we would notice if they weren’t disguised.
 

The sense of detachment also applies to expression. People with low SE describe a sense of detachment from their actions, especially when those actions reflect positive achievements that contradict their LC beliefs. And most importantly, the sense of detachment supports the belief that the individual is powerless to control major aspects of their life. As I have mentioned, the observer perspective perpetuates the view that the individual is not the prime mover in their life. It is impossible to have the power of control over life if you are not the prime mover. 

Many negative behavioral expressions, like addiction or anorexia, are comorbid with low self-esteem (SE). Because low SE is a primary gearing (primary gearings are gearings related to life and self), the emotions associated with it are very strong and appear very real. When you add the self-perpetuating nature of primary gearings, dealing with low SE becomes extremely difficult. Therefore, the same can be said of the maladaptive behaviors to which it gives rise.  
 

    One of the fundamental difficulties in dealing with low SE is getting an alternate view of self across to people who are suffering from it. Even the idea that a viable alternate view exists is difficult to grasp.  Whilst the subject may cognitively understand what is being presented, they have no emotional or personal identification with it and therefore it tends not to have personal impact. CRT represents an approach to working around this problem.  
 

     CRT is based on the premise that using a subject’s own experience and opinions as a basis to formulate alternate views will give the picture that emerges some degree of automatic emotional identification. For example, a person with low SE would be encouraged to formulate what, in their opinion, would be a positive developmental environment for a child. They are then asked to postulate what impact it would have had on their own development if they had been raised in that type of environment. Would they still have the same SE problem? The resulting answer typically allows the person to draw a different meaning from life events.  Because the conclusions are based on personal data, rather than data being put to them from an outside source, there is a high degree of emotional identification with the conclusions, and with the concept that there are other ways of viewing themselves. And of course, if the subjects are formulating what they believe would be a positive upbringing, it should by nature include important aspects relevant to their own development. For example, I would expect a person who had a violent upbringing to perceive a positive environment as one that is non-violent. Therefore, the pictures that the subjects develop are individually specific. A therapeutically desirable outcome.
 

      What is laid out here is the basic concept, but the application of the principle can be quite diverse. Firstly, therapists can structure the application for their own specific needs. For example, it is possible to get people to formulate concepts from any perspective relevant to their particular situation. In the SE example from above, subjects could also be asked to formulate what they believe would be a positive environment for emotional development, or for cognitive development. The choice of focal point can easily be tailored to the particular circumstances of any individual and thus provides a useful therapeutic framework across a multitude of behavioral, emotional, or cognitive disorders.
 

      Cognitive applications provide a stark view of our development. Because as children we have no developed cognitive abilities, data, or experience we are forced to believe in the example our parents set for us. It is fairly widely accepted that often children will develop low SE because they have no other way to interpret negative treatment than it reflected a problem in them.  We are not capable as children of interpreting negative parental actions as reflective of a problem in our parents. Therefore, the cognitive application of CRT is to get subjects to judge formative events that had a negative effect from an adult perspective.

Measuring Self-Esteem
 

Self-esteem (SE) scales are some of the most commonly used tools in psychology.  The predominant SE test is the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory (RSI), a short written test of questions relating to judgments of the self that relies solely upon self-report data. This test has been in use without modification for over half a century.  To say that psychologists have not gained sufficient insight into SE during that time to warrant an update or improvement on this tool seems inconsistent with the principles of constructive research.  In some ways, it is hard to fathom why psychologists have not at least added another dimension to the RSI using the same approach the authors used to create the first version. Unfortunately, this test has become so endemic in the SE research area that improvements have been absent even when research could have benefited from the availability of a more in depth, less biased, and more accurate assessment than the RSI can provide.
 

Since SE is a major component of the self-concept, and since we are living through our individual self-concept all of the time, SE must influence all aspects of our lives in one way or another.  Therefore, it is difficult to argue against the idea that greater understanding of the SE phenomenon would not only give rise to better testing modalities, but also have great benefit to SE research principles overall.  For example, researchers face significant difficulty understanding the etiology of, and developing efficacious therapies for, psychopathologies such as anorexia nervosa (AN) that possess strong linkage to SE. It is this author’s contention that the difficulties researchers face is due in part to a failure to truly understand and assess human fundamentals like SE. As a result, much published research implicates chronic low SE as a comorbid factor in disorders like AN without considering that chronic low SE itself can account for most, if not all, of the underlying drivers and characteristics of AN.  In fact, SE consistently presents as a key factor in the expression of eating disorders (see the link to Self-Esteem Meta-analysis).
 

Many psychologists defend the continued use of the RSI by pointing out that it does measure characteristics of SE and is relatively consistent over time.  While these are important aspects of a valid SE scale, the shortcomings of the tool create only a superficial assessment of SE and therefore leave much room for misinterpretation. For example, a sound scientific approach to research dictates that the testing tool remove as much subject bias from psychological testing as possible.  Unfortunately, self-reporting Likert scale tests like the RSI are extremely vulnerable to subject bias and the development of a new or improved assessment inventory is both desirable and necessary.
 

Flaws of the RSI
 

Although this author finds the RSI to be both flawed and overly superficial, my criticism is not so much of the RSI itself as it is of its widespread continued use with little or no improvement for decades. The RSI was originally created by a team of sociologists in 1965 who were working with a large subject population and who required a quick, easily administered, unidimensional SE test with face validity in order to employ multivariate analysis approaches to SE research.  The authors accomplished this goal fairly well in that their premises were well thought out and arguments for validation were well made.  However, even the authors would have recognized that they were creating a relatively superficial tool that therefore lacked specificity and sensitivity to individual differences.
 

This lack of specificity is apparent when you consider the fact that the RSI does not differentiate between high SE and defensive high SE, also known as narcissism.  By definition. The word “defensive” is one that should correlate more tightly with low SE.  Therefore, defensive high SE is actually a contradiction in concepts. Psychologists describe the narcissistic individual as possessing an over-emphasized sense of self-importance, a characteristic that runs contrary to the more balanced approach we associate with high SE. It is the author’s opinion that narcissists fall within the low SE group, but have developed compensatory presentational tactics that make them present as high SE individuals.  Unfortunately, the RSI cannot distinguish true high SE from narcissism based upon the short directive questions, a serious inadequacy in any SE test.
 

Some psychologists have questioned whether explicit SE scales like the RSI actually measure self-presentation rather than SE.  Considering the fact that Western societies have an undeniable emphasis on presentation, this is a valid question.  One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to notice the level to which human beings are capable of believing in a false representation of self, or falsely interpreting their own and others’ actions colored by those beliefs. As such, it is logical to assume that presentation impacts RSI scores, even if such have not been routinely parceled out of the data, and that it is highly desirable to remove this confounding variable from the mix.
 

Another criticism of the RSI is the fact that it presents with heavy within-test bias, a problem shared with many self-report Likert style test.  For instance, the way a subject answers one question influences how they answer another, unless they are prepared to provide obviously conflicting information.  For example, it is totally inconsistent to choose “agree/agree very much” for the statement “I take a positive view of myself” and then to choose “agree/agree very much” to a subsequent statement of “All in all I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.” Likewise, a positive answer to the statement “On the whole I am satisfied with myself” is not consistent with a positive response to the statement “I wish I could have more respect for myself.”  Some psychologists would point out that it is possible to feel satisfied on the whole but still wish for more self-respect, but on face value, most subjects completing this inventory would be aware of the contradiction and the gross generality of the statements does not allow for assessment of the degree of regard or the nuances impacting the judgments.  This gives rise to ambiguity in how any given subject interprets the questions, and since the responses fall into two opposing categories, this will have some biasing effect on the overall results.  It is not difficult to conceive that identifying oneself with one side or the other in the first few questions naturally predisposes the subject to maintaining continuity for future responses, either consciously or subconsciously.  Therefore, within-test bias is a significant confounding variable in the RSI, especially since the objective of the test is readily apparent to the subject taking it.
 

Developing a New SE Test
 

In considering the development of a new SE test that accounts for the deficiencies of the RSI, we are faced with two fundamental questions – which expressions of SE are we going to measure (the RSI measures the obvious overt expressions of SE as perceived by the individual) and how are we going to measure them?
 

The question of what we need to measure is theoretically easy to answer.  Psychologists agree that low and high SE individuals process information related to the self differently.  This means that subjects on opposite ends of the spectrum have different cognitive criteria that are reflected in the way stimuli are interpreted, the types of behavioral choices that are acceptable, and in personal preferences across a wide variety of situations.  Even a concept as simple as to what a person will attend to in a given social interaction will reflect these different criteria in some form or another.
 

The problem that we face here is a significant lack of essential data.  SE researchers understandably tend to gather data related to their specific point of focus, but what is needed is a significant increase in our basic understanding of SE, how it develops, its purpose, and how it perpetuates our self-view. This not only requires gathering more in depth and multidimensional data in the lab, but also doing extensive field work.  There is only so much that can be learned by asking subjects questions in a controlled setting where presentational factors are highly activated. The main limitation is that researchers gather data related to the expression of a phenomenon but never get to witness the subjective expression of that phenomenon for themselves.  If the researchers were able to spend a couple of days observing someone with low SE compared to someone with high SE, they would not only collect significant data related to subjective expressions of SE in general but would also be able to observe these expressions in a real life setting with more validity.
 

The question relating to how we measure SE evokes the concept of implicit vs explicit testing.  The most obvious problem with explicit self-report tests is subject bias.  Implicit tests are in general more desirable because they account for this variable.  Unfortunately, psychologists tend to view implicit tests with skepticism because they do not correlate strongly enough with explicit tests like the RSI. This could easily be the case of a better approach being rejected because it doesn’t correlate strongly enough with a worse approach.  In addition, variance in implicit testing across individuals can impact the reproducibility required for much organizational SE testing, leading us to a false narrative that “SE is what the RSI measures” similarly to what has been found true for “Intelligence is what IQ tests measure.”  Despite the complexities of designing and validating implicit SE tests, any approach that helps address presentational and subject bias is preferable to an approach that doesn’t.
 

Both bias and the ease of administering the test would be addressed if an implicit paper and pencil test were developed.  The first requirement would be to have neutral, non-evocative questions as the research vehicle.  By neutral, I mean that the questions themselves do not give any specific indication of what is being measured. The questions in the RSI leave the subject in little doubt as to what is being assessed. By non-evocative, I mean that the questions are less likely to evoke subject bias by occluding the specific goal or purpose of the question.  For instance, asking a subject the question “I feel I am equal to others” requires them to make a personal assessment of their own self-worth. This opens the door for all manner of individual and societal bias and confounding variables to be evoked.  Identifying characteristics of individuals with low and high SE on other dimensions would reduce this interference.  For instance, if low SE people tend to prefer activities that can be done alone and those with high SE prefer group activities (this is totally hypothetical and for illustration purposes only), then scenarios could be devised to tap into these differentiating characteristics and thus mask or avoid perception of the test as centering on SE.
 

Because SE is strongly related to our perceived status in relation to the external world (and specifically other people), it follows that factors related to SE will be activated when entering a novel situation. As already discussed, psychologists agree that low and high SE individuals process data differently and therefore have different cognitive criteria for making self-relevant judgements.  For example, high SE can be defined as the absence of self-doubt and low SE (including narcissism) as the existence of self-doubt,  Upon entering a novel situation, an individual with high SE, and therefore no self-doubt, has only to process data about the situation itself,  The low SE person, on the other hand, is going to have self-doubt evoked (either consciously or subconsciously) and therefore has to process both the situational data AND how they related to their view of themselves, which is a much more complex processing requirement. Narcissistic individuals have an even more complex task in that coping mechanisms like avoidance behavior may not be as acceptable to a narcissist who needs to project a strong image to others.
 

An implicit SE test could leverage our understanding of different cognitive strategies to allow researchers to assess the SE status of an individual in a neutral or non-provocative situation.  Take the following scenario:

You enter a bar you’ve never been to before.  It is quite busy and you notice a friend sitting at the end of the bar in conversation with a group of people unknown to you. Your friend does not see you enter.  You would prefer to:

               A) Wait until your friend has seen and acknowledged you before going over and saying hello
 

              B) Go to the bar and buy a drink before going over to say hello.
 

             C) Go straight over and say hello.
 

Option A should appeal more to the low SE group because it gives more time for the complex processing requirements associated with low SE and reduces the activation associated with initiating social contact.  Option B should appeal more to the narcissistic group because it gives a valid reason for taking the time necessary for processing before taking affirmative action, thereby maintaining and reinforcing the “strong” self-image.  Option C would be preferable to the high SE group who do not have the extra cognitive processing requirement or the self-worth triggers in play.
 

Again, this is a simplistic example designed to demonstrate a point (and note that these specific scenario responses have not been validated).  The point being made is that cognitive criteria can be identified and studied in creative and non-obvious ways to avoid the bias inherent in the current testing modalities.
 

Perhaps the most complex question relating to the development of a new SE test is the question of validation.  One way of addressing this problem is to develop a large enough data pool.  If sufficient personally relevant in-depth data with specific focus on the day to day experience of living with low or high SE were to be gathered, important differentiating characteristics of SE status would likely emerge. These SE drivers could then be used to develop a test such as the one described above.
 

Once identified, employing quantitative and objective evaluation of those drivers could be accomplished using electrophysiological or functional imaging endpoints to prospering categorize and validate the concepts.  For example, if high and low SE subjects do indeed process data differently and believed, then it is logical to assume that differences in brain activity would run parallel with these different processing patterns and therefore be measurable and observable.
 

                                                     Conclusion
 

This discussion has laid out the theoretical basis for the development of an implicit pencil and paper test that could replace general nonspecific inventories like the RSI in the field of SE research.  Considering the fact that the RSI was developed as a superficial test for mass assessment of a generalized psychological phenomenon, it is surprising that no further advancement has arisen in the field.  It is quite likely that such has not happened in part because researchers haven’t fully grasped the fact that, to truly understand human behavior, it is necessary to study the behavior as it is expressed in subjective life.  You cannot gain all of the data required to understand something as complex as SE solely by using blunt tools in the lab.
 

It is also this author’s opinion that psychologists who study the mental/emotional side of human beings should look more to their neuroscience counterparts.  Mind or brain, it is all one being. Mental and emotional expressions have associated brain activity that can be leveraged to shed more light on complex psychological phenomenon like SE and therefore advance our understanding of the impact SE has on various human behaviors and their relation to mental health.

 Figure 2.  Mean effect sizes (+ upper and lower confidence levels) for each study and overall effect size for cohort of 8 articles with more rigorously defined experimental and control groups 

      The present results suggest a very strong relationship between low SE and the existence of an ED, even collapsing across various subtypes of ED.  According to conventional nomenclature, meta-analysis approaches use the following classification criteria for determining magnitude of the effect size: <0.20 = small, 0.50 = medium, > 0.80 = large (Lipsey & Wilson, 2001). The magnitude of the effect sizes obtained in the current analyses (-2.0 and -2.2) are therefore extremely large, and indicate virtually no overlap between control and ED groups. These results solidify the increasing belief within the clinical field that chronic low self-esteem is a critical component underlying the etiology of ED.
 

           Most therapeutic approaches for ED focus primarily upon restoration of nutritional intake and maintenance of stable weight, and rightfully so.  However, once these life-threatening factors are addressed, it may be most beneficial to center the continuing intervention upon techniques that improve SE.  The strength of the association between SE and ED reported here suggests that directive therapy toward SE would enhance the likelihood of recovery, shorten the time necessary for medical intervention, and serve to protect against relapse.  Indeed, one could argue that every therapeutic approach to ED should include a strong focus on SE.
 

Finally, the idea of a much greater causal role for SE in psychological disorders than previously recognized leads us to consider the possibility that we have grossly underestimated the impact of SE phenomenon on development and stability of ED.  One area of interest for researchers and clinicians is the ability to have early detection tools for those at risk for a disorder. Since not everyone with low SE develops an ED, such strongly entrenched behaviors as anorexia and bulimia do so because they fit with a particular configuration of SE (14). As such, there must be some potentially identifiable aspects of the global SE profile that closely correlate with the development of an ED.  Therefore, future research should survey a broader scope of relevant SE characteristics, including both explicit and implicit markers of SE, in terms of their relevance to both ED prevalence and potential for predicting treatment response. 

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