IJSP Number 6, 2024

94 such can and is assimilated and understood as a promise that could fulfil one’s impossible to fulfil wants, or desires, or even whims. Psychotherapy is just another more , a more than one already has. It is a more also because you can afford it and others don’t. And if they do afford it, you still can afford the best and of course the most expensive therapist in town. As we can see, there can be a lot of crescendos of more even in the field supposed to cure the problem caused by self-importance. And, indeed, we should not forget the wonderful formulation of Roger Waters: “It’s not enough that we succeed, we still need others to fail”. [12]. On the other hand, self-esteem does not need psychotherapy, simply because it does not search for more. As such, self-esteem is (self)contained, self- sufficient and autonomous. More than that, self-esteem is not on the consumer’s and consumerist’s societies side. Self-esteem is rather on the existential side – rather to be and not to have , as Erich Fromm, in his famous “To Have or to Be?” [13], justly differentiated it – and consequently, not a very worthy asset of the consumerist society. Self-esteem is rather a niche manifestation and, from the globalized consumerist point of view, it should stay that way. As such, the existential approach of self-esteem is just a minority with which psychotherapy does not have to much concern. Such people do not have problems with their problems. Of course, that on the other side, namely for the great majority of the self-important ones, psychotherapy becomes an accredited and much sought ‘commodity’. But, once self-esteem becomes a life paradigm, such people, as Murray Bowen emphasized: “… are able to cope successfully with a broader range of human situations, and they are remarkably free from the full range of human problems.” [14]. What does that mean? It simply means that such people can cope with problems that life confronts us with every day because they have organized their own lives as to get rid of the great majority of the daily problematic trivialities. There is, between the existence of the self-important ones and that of the ones that live on the self-esteem side of things, a great and fundamental difference. Indeed, it is a gap between the two existential life positions or attitudes. A gap that is, we may say, pretty much unsurpassable not because of the distance – one that could be recuperated by continuous and constant self- development –, but rather because of two different levels of existence – levels of differentiation of the self (as in Bowen’s theory). In order to get on the other side, namely that of self-esteem, one should do a somersault, a leap of faith, indeed, that would propel them in another existential niche. And, what should be specified right from the beginning, in fact self-esteem is not a state, a fixed existential possession but a process that reiterates every day. Self-esteem is not like an acquired good, one bought at the promotional offer of a supermarket and that can be presented for ‘likes’ and the like. Self-esteem cannot be owned, it is not on the level defined by ‘to have’, but it belongs rather to the paradigm of ‘to be’.