All of us have a concept of ourselves made of things we believe, or want to believe, about ourselves. As in the case of the other kinds of personality, three aspects of our self-concept are of special importance in determining how well we regard ourselves—self-esteem, self-respect, and self-confidence. I believe that these three bases of self-regard are mutually reinforcing. For example, when our self-esteem increases, this tends to bolster both our self-respect and our self-confidence. Likewise, as we gain self-respect, it becomes easier for us to gain in self-confidence and self esteem. And this reciprocity can work the other way: a loss of self-confidence can undermine respect for and pride in ourselves.
Different types of personality, naturally, base their self-image on quite different things. Having a good opinion of ourselves makes for our happiness, and often our success, so it is well that we pause for a moment to compare the four types on this all-important aspect of personality.
The chart below shows that most Idealists see themselves, and wish to be seen by others, as empathic, benevolent, and authentic, with other at tributes, such as artistic gracefulness and audacity, important to Artisans, contributing almost nothing to the Idealists’ positive sense of themselves: Self-Image
Self-Esteem Self-Respect Self-Confidence
Idealists Guardians Rationals Artisans Empathic Dependable Ingenious Artistic Benevolent Beneficent Autonomous Audacious Authentic Respectable Resolute Adaptable
The Self-Image o f Idealists 137 As illustrated by the figure at
the side, I think there is a triangular relationship between empathy, be nevolence, and authenticity, each undergirding or undermining, as the case may be, the others. But even if the three attributes are not inter dependent, they still deserve close scrutiny, considering that they are
the bases of the Idealist’s self-image. Let us then take a close look at empathy, benevolence, and authenticity.
Self-Esteem in Empathy
Idealist self-esteem is greatest when they see themselves and are seen by others as empathic in bonding with people in their circle. Idealists feel a kind of natural sympathy for mankind, but they base their self-esteem on the empathy they feel with those people closest to them. To the NFs, even introverted NFs, life is nothing without sensitive personal ties, without shared experiences and intimate attachments, without rapport so close that consciousness itself seems to be shared. NFs, after all, cannot not be personal, and the health of their relationships is beyond everything else the measure of their self-worth—enhanced when their relationships are deeply connected and vital, and diminished when they are distanced or troubled. Idealist journalist and author Elie Wiesel remembers just how vital in his personal development were empathic friendships:
As a child I needed friendship more than tenderness to progress, reflect, dream, share, and breathe. The slightest dispute with a friend gave me a sleepless night as I lay wondering whether I would ever again know the excitement of a nighttime walk, of discussions about happiness, humanity’s future, and the meaning of life. Disappointment in this domain caused me greater pain than a failure in school.
Idealists can become absorbed in drawing close to a single person, or they can become deeply involved with a group (their family, friends, the class they’re teaching, a church congregation, and so on). But they are simply not interested, not for very long at least, in things other than empathic human relationships.
That religion of the 1960s, called the “encounter group movement,” was mainly motivated and populated by NFs seeking greater empathy in their relationships, trying to capture an elusive intimacy. Many of them joined T-groups, sensitivity groups, Gestalt groups, marathons (nude and otherwise), Transcendental Meditation groups, Primal Scream groups, and of course EST—all in an effort to find a way to live more freely and lovingly. They explored verbal and nonverbal dimensions of communication,
hoping to become more fully aware of their emotions, and to learn how to relate more closely and sensitively with others. In many of these groups they found, for a time at least, the sense of communion they sought, describing the experience as a kind of high of spiritual bonding—or what Terry O’Bannion and April O’Connel referred to as a “Shared Journey”:
At the exact moment when I encounter someone I feel as if I am some place I have never been before. It’s hard to describe. Like you and this other person are out in space with each other and looking down on the earth.
Sadly, however, many Idealists report that after such an initial encounter is over the glorious empathy usually fades away in the routine of daily living.
Self-Respect in Benevolence
Idealists base their self-respect on their ability to maintain an attitude of benevolence or goodwill toward other people—toward all of existence, for that matter. NFs are without question filled with good intentions and kind feelings; they have a fierce aversion to animosity of any sort, and they will suppress their own feelings of enmity and hostility as best they can. Perhaps this is because Idealists have a powerful and ever-present conscience which hurts them deeply whenever they harbor feelings of malice, cruelty, revenge, or other mean-spirited intentions.
In truth, any evidence of cruelty in the world stabs Idealists to the heart and they cry out against it. E.M. Forster’s character Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India simply cannot accept the smug superiority and callous prejudice of the British in India. Mrs. Moore fervently believes the British should base their colonial administration on the principle of everlasting kindliness—“Good will and more good will and more good will”—and she insists to her son that “The English are out here to be pleasant....India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth to be pleasant to each other...to love our neighbors and to show it.” To the Idealists, the Guardians’ good deeds and the Rationals’ sense of autonomy are admirable as well, and worthy of cultivation, while the Artisans’ audacity seems superficial. But without question benevolence is the greatest virtue, and malevolence
the greatest evil.
Self-Confidence in Authenticity
Idealist self-confidence rests on their authenticity, their genuineness as a person, or put another way, the self-image they present to the world allows for no fa§ade, no mask, no pretense. To be authentic is to have integrity, inner unity, to ring true, and, driven by a Gandhi-like desire for Absolute Truth, Idealists insist on an ever higher standard of authenticity for themselves. On the other hand, if NFs somehow undercut their authen
The Self-Image o f Idealists 139 ticity by being phony or false or insincere, they can be taken over by fear and self-doubt. In his brilliant book, The Divided Self, psychotherapist R.D. Laing describes the anxiety NFs can feel when they have lost their authenticity, or when they find themselves being what Laing calls “like everyone else, being someone other than oneself, playing a part.” In one client’s case, Laing writes,
As his feeling of what properly belonged to his ‘true’ self contracted more and more, this self began to feel more and more vulnerable and he came to be more and more frightened that other people could penetrate through his sham personality.
In extreme cases (and since Idealists believe the Self is something one finds), this loss of self-confidence can become a truly debilitating fear of the losing of Self entirely—or as Laing puts it,
The ‘inner’ secret self hates the characteristics of the false self. It also fears it, because the assumption of an alien identity is always experienced as a threat to one’s own. The self fears being engulfed by the spread of the identification.
Few Idealists become this lost in inauthenticity, of course, but many live with some vague feelings of uncertainty about their genuineness, some secret doubt about their wholeness.
The problem for Idealists is that this ardent wish to be genuine at all times and everywhere actually separates them from the authenticity they demand of themselves, and forces them, to a certain extent, into the very role-playing they want to avoid. NFs report over and over that they are subject to an inner voice which urges them to “Be real, Be authentic”—always in the NF is that voice reminding them about being whole, unified, and true. But with this other voice in their head, Idealists are inevitably caught in a dual role. Instead of the whole-hearted, authentic person they want to be, they are at once director and actor: they are on stage, and, at the same time, they are watching themselves being on stage, and prompting themselves with lines. The irony of this wanting to be authentically themselves is that it often leaves Idealists feeling divided and false, standing to one side and telling themselves to be themselves.
Authenticity is also difficult for Idealists because of their spontaneous and uninvited self-consciousness. From very early in life, NFs (more than SPs, SJs, or NTs) seem to feel others’ eyes upon them, and to grant those around them the right to pass judgment on them, which is to say that they are highly aware of themselves as objects of moral scrutiny. While Rationals typically reserve to themselves the right to judge their own actions, Idealists are very sensitive to how they are seen by others, and care a great deal about meeting others’ expectations. So here again NFs are caught in a
dilemma: confident of their integrity, yet at the same time devoted to pleasing others, they must walk on a razor’s edge, with authenticity on one side, and moral approval on the other. Learning to reconcile these two often conflicting facets of their self-image is an important and sometimes arduous task for many NFs.