IJSP Number 6, 2024

85 For every therapist or psychotherapist, it should be very clear that: One cannot touch or try to resolve psychological problems or the complicated issues of self-importance; and that is true for the therapist as well as for the clients of any strictly psychological therapy form. Why would that be so? We can discern many motives but, for the beginning we should discuss, in the following, the more important ones. First of all, because self-importance makes you, more or less, the ‘number one’ and that is an existential position nobody can touch or even get close to it. From that superior position of ‘number one’, one sees the world of others at one’s feet, literally and figuratively speaking. Consequently, there are, from such a unilateral perspective, two categories of people: the number one, namely himself, and all ‘the others’ or the rest of them – anonymous, unimportant, negligible. Secondly, because self-importance is, as the name itself already implies it, impervious or impermeable to discussion, questioning, rethinking, or ‘rewriting’ (psychotherapeutically). Self-importance is a closed territory, something like a fortress surrounded by high and impenetrable walls, surrounded also by a deep ditch of water nobody can pass. Thirdly, because self-importance is something artificial and as such unnatural, it is not something oriented towards oneself and one’s own problems (in fact, there are none seen), but rather it is only a self-presenting or a showcase oriented towards the public, essentially to ‘the others’, in order to get something in exchange: applause, appraisal, validation, or whatever they can reflect on you in order to (re)enhance your self-importance. Fourthly, everybody (or pretty much everybody) wants to be important (“someone important, like an actor”, as Cypher says in Matrix [2]), everybody wants to be somebody. The only problem is that there are so many ‘somebodies’, and every ‘somebody’ is so important that he or she cannot be ignored, put aside, or neglected, because everybody is desperately craving to be important, to shine, and to be in the first line, on a podium, or a pedestal. Consequently, no one will have the time, the disposition, or the attention needed to pay attention or to validate others. As such, the personal evolution of the individual is impeded, because, as George E. Vaillant indicates: “Ego development reflects our ongoing striving to allow the self- diminishing sin of projection to evolve towards the self-expanding virtue of empathy . This process of ego development simultaneously involves self-deception and the growth of wisdom and creativity.” [3] (author’s underline). But, if everyone is surrounded by the high walls of one’s own self- importance, the discussion about empathy is out of the question. Self-importance does not invite towards self-diminishing, on the contrary. In fact, beyond those high walls of one’s own importance there is nothing more to see, perceive, or understand, there only are ‘the others’, those who are supposed to validate and appreciate one’s own magnificence.