IJSP Number 6, 2024

88 to think, and feel, and behave in the way that others believe he ought to think, and feel, and behave.” [6] (author’s underline) Consequently, we may say that self-importance is like a monopoly put on the person, one that does not allow any stepping out of a preestablished behavioural pattern. Sonner or later, the individual will arrive at the clear and unmistakable conclusion, one that imposes itself upon his soul, that: “that’s it, and there’s nothing I can do about it!”. Therefore, one has no other option or alternative left open to orient oneself towards another existential paradigm. Tragically, self-importance, once it is adopted (or rather when it adopts and imposes itself on the individual), it arrests the individual in a sophisticated cage, the bars of which are made of all the items self-importance constantly needs in order to show off. In the end, it is all about the firm enclosed character of any paradigm, namely a construct defined by, contained in, and confined to its own borders. In fact, it is right there, at its borders or personal periphery, that the paradigm of self-importance is the most active and impressive. There it must shine, because there it must be all the presentation and bragging. The existential paradigm of self-importance is not defined from the interior, from the self , its artificiality and falseness become even more obvious when one looks at the empty interior, a psychological waste land. The self-importance paradigm is a socio- psychological construct, a mask one can acquire and adopt from the many shops of self-adulteration opened 24/7 in the economy of systematic human alienation. As Erich Fromm emphasized: “It is the function of the social character to shape the energies of the members of society in such a way that their behavior is not a matter of conscious decision as to whether or not to follow the social pattern, but one of wanting to act as they have to act and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the requirements of the culture. In other words, it is the social character’s function to mold and channel human energy within a given society for the purpose of the continued functioning of this society .” [7] (author’s underline). What is an individual in such a great social machinery? What is a person worth in this “purpose of the continued functioning of this society”? Is the answer to such a provocative question in the “social character’s function to mold and channel human energy” in a very precise direction or with a very poignant purpose? Because if so, we can see how empty the waste land of the modern person truly is. And, more so, how ubiquitous the external moulding process is, a moulding needed by society in order to function, but a moulding that impedes on the growth, development, or evolution of the individual. Engulfed by socially oriented and coined standards, with an a priori double-binding structure, on the one hand moulding and defining, and, on the other hand, enhancing a false sense of importance, the individual finds himself in an inescapable schizophrenogenic situation. Because, at least after the Palo Alto school of systemic family therapy, that is the result of any paradoxical injunctions, as double bindings normally tend