self-love: healthy or neurotic?

Some people seek psychotherapy in NYC with the following thought in mind: “I need to love myself more.”

Who could argue with that?

Well, Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau might. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say that he would challenge us to philosophize—to unpack the term ‘self-love,’ reflect on its underlying assumptions and clarify what we mean.

two kinds of self-love

Rousseau is famous for (among numerous other things) making a distinction between:

amour propre – self-love that flows from winning approval and validation from others, where the priority is ‘how others see me’ within a given social hierarchy.

amour de soi – self-love that is characterized by an internal sense of security and satisfaction based on the fact of one’s existence, unconcerned with social status and the opinions of others.

know thyself, and then…

Can you tell when you are feeling good about yourself because you’re getting social approval vs. feeling good because you’ve tapped into (for the moment) a deeper experience of reality where external validation is irrelevant? This distinction is important for us to be able to discern.

Why?

Because amour propre is somewhat of a high and has a precarious nature. In other words, it goes away quickly and ends in a sort of crash, leaving us craving external validation over and over again. And as we all know, this cycle of approval-seeking has felled many a giant.

Amour de soi, however, has a more stabilizing and grounding quality and is not dependent on the shifting winds of others’ opinions. In this experience we feel a powerful sense of well-being that results from engaging in life in ways that are aligned with our deepest values and interests.

…grow beyond the self

Cultivating amour de soi in our experience is like pouring Miracle-Gro on our character. Such an approach to life is not only intrinsically valuable—it also enables us to be more generous in our relationships and more generative in the world.

Of course people will approve of you along the way as you become more relationship-centered and creative, but winning approval is not the goal. It’s not bad; it’s just not what we’re preoccupied with.

The point is that our self-concept and internal sense of wellness cannot be overly reliant on the social mirror—it must flow primarily from living life according to principles that connect you to the best of who you are as well as to something larger than yourself.