We are nearing the 8th anniversary of the publication of our book, Hollow Kids: Recapturing the Soul of a Generation Lost to the Self-Esteem Myth. We were especially pleased with this book. Although the book briefly received substantial attention from national media such as CNN; events around 9-11, the sale of the publisher, and other miscellaneous happenings quickly closed the door on such attention and sales. We are not bemoaning the book’s rapid demise into out of print status. But we do feel good that media such as Parent Magazine, Better Homes & Garden, the New York Post, and the Washington Times continued to write articles about it for several years after it was no longer available. And a colleague of ours recently wrote a review of the book that pleased us even more.

Even though we have a newly released book, Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies, that we would dearly love to attract attention to, we wanted to do something special for the 8th anniversary of Hollow Kids. Does this mean we’re going to pitch an expensive copy to you? No. We feel grateful for the following we’ve had for our Anxiety and OCD Exposed blog and decided that we’d like to offer our readers a free pdf download of Hollow Kids from now until August 31st. It’s the complete book, not a condensed online version. No catch; no strings. We just want to express our gratitude for your interest and following. Of course, if you feel like checking out Borderline Personality Disorder For Dummies while you’re at it, that would be great too!

By the way, this book has been a bit controversial. We look forward to an honest, respectful debate about our ideas. Here’s the review by our colleague (presented with permission) recently published in the New Mexico Psychological Association’s newsletter. See what you think.

We Have Met the Enemy and He Certainly Has High Self-Esteem

By Frank Spring, Ph.D., J.D.

Here they come, pierced, tattooed, and below grade level on all achievement scores. Meet the future of America now goofing at the mall for their smirking peers, wearing the latest cool brands bought with parental indulgence or maybe shoplifted. These kids bully, cheat, overeat, undereat, get high, overspend and sometimes, out of the blue, they also kill.

These kids need mental health attention in the worst way and, according to Laura Smith, PhD, and Charles Elliott, PhD, mental health practitioners should have a good grasp on what makes them tick. After all, it was the mental health movement that made these kids so rotten.

Hollow Kids: Recapturing the Soul of a Generation Lost to the Self-Esteem Myth is crisply written and backed by solid research. And it is a rousing polemic, the kind that provokes the reader to interrupt his spouse for a rant. At a deeper level, the book evokes pity for a generation of children who, owing to the misguided application of psychological principles, have been led into a hollow, depressing existence.

The authors concentrate their fire on two primary enemies, mental health advocates and educators. Starting with Abraham Maslow, who they blame for providing “fertilizer for the seedlings of the self-esteem movement by developing his concept of self-actualization,” they next aim at Carl Rogers. They see Rogers’s unconditional positive regard for his clients as a foundational principle for the self-esteem movement, which rapidly takes a turn for the barmy. By the 1960′s, there appear a number of self-esteem authors and promoters. Smith and Elliott joyously label them “traffickers in self-esteem” (conjuring images of them selling their wares to the unsuspecting in middle school parking lots), “peddlers of self-esteem,” and “self-esteem entrepreneurs.” Not that the self-esteemers don’t give the authors some hefty ammo, such as the following titles: I Love Me!; We’re All Special; Love Yourself First; The Ultimate Miracle:You!

The mischief in this apparent nonsense derives from the focus on the self and the notion that kids should be taught to love themselves madly and to expect happiness, all the time. Left behind are the crucial tasks of childhood: frustration tolerance, self-control, and persistence. Following the precepts of the self-esteem movement, parents strive to make sure that their children never suffer from feelings of being second-best regardless of how poorly they perform. If children think well of themselves, they will of necessity lead happy, productive lives. Conversely, low self-esteem will lead children to marginalized social lives, even crime.

Educators bought seriously into the movement and modified curricula to enhance self-esteem. These changes derive from psychologists selling their self-esteem nostrums to educators, according to the authors. They attack Carl Rogers’s educational prescription that schools should be places where “students would come to prize themselves, would develop self-confidence, and self-esteem.” Classrooms should be student-centered, since learning comes from within. Teachers should provide each student with unconditional positive regard. Criticism, including grading, was considered a bad thing. It was to be the end of formal instruction as we knew it.

In the 1980′s, the State of California adopted enhancement of self-esteem as a state-wide priority for its schools along with a compatible “whole-language” approach to reading to make learning more enjoyable for students. By 1989, reading scores dropped for the first time in the state, so the state dropped the reading achievement test. By 1995, California scored dead last among states in reading, even below Mississippi. The authors caption this segment, “Johnny Can’t Read, But He Feels Good.” They follow with a discourse on “counterfeit achievement” and make a statistical showing that grades in our high schools inflated over the years 1990-2000 by such a margin that they became practically unusable for college admission committees. And as grades went up, SAT scores went down. Meanwhile, at the college level, students became contentious about receiving less than high marks. One professor called his grievance panel the “rhinoplasty committee,” since it performed cosmetic surgery on so many transcripts each year.

Smith and Elliott surprise the reader with a panoply of vices usually attributed to low self-esteem, such as early sexual behavior, bullying, gambling (a greater risk to teenagers than we would like to think), gang membership, and violence. Their citations correlate such conduct not with low self-esteem, but high self-esteem. They sprinkle their argument with pungent anecdotes. After the Columbine massacre on Hitler’s birthday, analysis of the killers’ diary entries suggested feelings of superiority and disdain for others, not low self-esteem. One killer, Dylan Klebold, wrote an essay two months before the mass killing describing a deadly assault on nine athletes ending with blood reflecting from street lamps. His teacher commented, “great details,” and “Quite an ending.”

The authors suggest that kids with high self-esteem based on unrealistic appraisal of their abilities often turn nasty, even vicious, when their grandiose self-opinion is challenged. Their self-esteem is brittle and unstable, much like kids with low self-esteem. By contrast, the authors observe that kids whose self-esteem is based on genuine accomplishment tend to shrug off momentary failures or reversals without boiling anger.

The bulk of Hollow Kids deals with children who have not been taught self-control, persistence, or frustration tolerance. They contrast these kids with a different set of sad children in a chapter titled The Perfection Paradox. Unlike the feel-good kids from whom no standards are expected, “perfection” kids are taught to meet and excel to the highest standards. Smith and Elliott open the chapter with Travis’s mom rushing him to his $150 an hour tutor for an extra session before he faces the big entrance exam. Taught deep breathing and visualization to prevent an exam freeze-up, Travis sleeps poorly the night before, but his mom urges coffee on Travis to boost memory and attention. Travis passes the exam and, at age three, enters the preschool of mom’s choice. Condemned to a life of studying and excelling, Travis falls prey to the “perfection paradox,” becoming more obsessive and less pleased with each performance. He begins to procrastinate and eventually rebels, becoming a mediocre, alienated student. The authors point to research showing that, of teens attempting suicide, the most intent on death were those seeking perfection.

Happily, the authors shine a light on a path taking us past the self-esteem and perfection models. They call their solution the “acceptance model,” arguing that the narcissism of high self-esteem and perfectionism can be avoided by parents teaching their children self-control and empathy. They cite to a delay-of-gratification study in which four year-olds who showed self-control had better scores on academics, friendship, coping, and freedom from personal problems. These later scores were collected a full ten years after the delay-of-gratification experiment. Instead of narcissistic self-esteem, the acceptance model teaches kids liberation from comparisons with others in a kind of self-forgetfulness. The authors urge parents to model self-control and effective coping, even to verbalize their thoughts as kids observe them solving problems in the home. In their chapter titled “Parenting Solid Kids,” they suggest that parents praise and condemn the deed, not the kid, thereby avoiding the trap of connecting self-worth to deeds. These parents show acceptance of the child, but make clear that the child’s behavior is open to criticism. And if a kid is made to feel guilty or bad for mistreating a peer, so much the better for teaching empathy. That, according to the authors, is what the research shows.

Paradoxically, Americans grew less happy as they acquired more material assets in the second half of the 20th century. Smith and Elliott close Hollow Kids with a list of factors favored by current research as tending to cause happiness (materialism and high self-esteem did not make the list). Happy people tend to show forgiveness and gratitude. They report friendships and belonging. They tend to be married. They are religious. Finally, they show self-control. These folks are connected to others and care about them in an effective way. And for the sacrifices made, they report increased satisfaction in living.

Smith and Elliott begin and end Hollow Kids at the mall, reflecting on what the kids there are wearing, saying, and doing. Most of it is not pretty. This milieu reminds us that, despite the best of parental intention, American kids are raised in a national environment of powerful commercial predation conducive to consumerism and crass cultural norms. Arguably, these influences are as pernicious as a pack of self-esteem gurus. Much of the research Smith and Elliott cite is correlational; they suggest without proving a causative relationship between the self-esteem movement and the many social ills visited on our kids. Still, they seem to have shouldered their burden. They have certainly argued their case artfully.

And, they had fun with this book. Their passion for children’s mental health and education shines through. They applied behavioral science to crucial issues and pointed to a clear direction for change. Dr. Elliott has said that Hollow Kids is the authors’ favorite book.

But, the race is not always to the swift, nor readership to the wise. Hollow Kids was released in September, 2001, a time when the nation’s attention was focused elsewhere. Despite favorable notices from popular names like John Rosemond and Albert Ellis, the book received little public notice, certainly not the attention it deserved. Indeed, it is now out of print. Nevertheless, it is not too late. Check Amazon.com or the website www.psychauthors.com where you can download your own copy (OUR NOTE: Free until August 31). Before long, you may find yourself interrupting your loved ones to tell them something they just have to hear.

Comments

This post currently has 29 comments/trackbacks.
You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts.

Trackbacks

Tracy Brinkmann (July 25, 2009)

Ashley Woods (July 25, 2009)

From Psych Central's Drs. Laura L. Smith & Charles H. Elliott:
Culture and Emotions | Anxiety and OCD Exposed (July 29, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 25 Jul 2009