Lacking in Self-Esteem? Good for You!

In his lachrymose self-eulogy last week, senator robert Torricelli did something quite remarkable. In the space of a relatively brief statement bowing out of the New Jersey Senate race, he managed to use the word I some 99 times. "I want to live life again," he explained. "I want to notice the passing of the seasons...I even want to notice the aging of my friends and family." It must be a tough life being such a selfless public servant, so busy helping others that you don't even notice that it's fall or that your kids have birthdays. But the Torch was about to put all that behind him. "It is time for me to reclaim my life," he went on. "I have done my duty to my country."

Notice, on top of all those I's, all those my's. There were indeed times in Torricelli's farewell soliloquy when the entire world seemed merely an extension of his own benevolence: "Somewhere today in one of several hospitals in New Jersey, some woman's life is going to be changed because of the mammography centers I've created for thousands of women," Torricelli croaked. "Somewhere all over New Jersey some senior citizen who doesn't even know my name lives in a senior center that I helped build ... That's my life. Don't feel badly for me. I changed people's lives." Swept away in the majestic self-regard of the speech, you might be forgiven for forgetting the reason for Torricelli's withdrawal: he had been severely admonished by his Senate and House colleagues for unethical acceptance of all sorts of perquisites from a wealthy allyand his poll numbers were plummeting. Such details were obscured by the blinding brightness of the man's self-love.

It was therefore a delicious coincidence that the next day the New York Times ran a story on the fate of the concept of self-esteem. You know what self-esteem is: according to decades of psychological and educational theory, it's the essential building block for a successful life. A few generations of children, especially minority kids, have been educated according to the theory that they lack self-esteem, that this deficiency is central to any problems they may have in making their way in the world and that the worst thing you can ever do to a child is to tell her that she isn't all that.