Self-Esteem

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In The Crimson issue on Wednesday, December 6, 1978, there was an article on the front page entitled: Six-College Study Shows Women Have low Self-Esteem. It reported on a study that showed that women had, on the average, more interest in personal friendships and less ambition for and anticipation of professional success than their male counterparts. Well and good, but the article went on to assert that therefore the women had less self-esteem than the men.

One can only then conclude that the authors then equate self-respect with (a) a massive and determined drive to "make it to the top" and (b) a willingness to sacrifice friends and friendships in order to attain this. It would seem to me that the above two qualities manage to sum up quite concisely everything that is wrong, offensive and self-destructive in the character of the traditional American male: the obsessive tendency to predicate one's valuation of oneself entirely on one's occupational successes and an inability to derive satisfaction and security from personal relationships. Surely if one does not want to become president of I B M, it could as easily be because one is quite satisfied enough with one's self as one is without needing a grueling and competetive job as an ego-prop as because one just doesn't feel one has "what it takes," since "what it takes" can easily be viewed as emotional frigidity combined with power infatuation.

Indeed, the study may well have shown what the title of the article would indicate, but the authors seek to convince us of this by holding up characteristics that have made American males obnoxious to others and dangerous to themselves, as benchmarks of self-esteem. If the authors really wish to support their claim, rather than assert it as dogma, perhaps studies of incidences of depression or of psychological profiles or even of degree of social interaction with the community would be far better to point to.

Nicholas Gunther