The book Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton describes social problems and psychological distress experienced by modern people. The author claims that mny people are unable to fulfill the American dream and achieve high social position in society valued and preached by the majority. Low social status leads many people to distress, anxiety and loneliness. The ability to bind anxiety, to perform effectively in the face of inner turmoil, is a characteristic associated with higher levels of ego functioning, such as would ensue from formation of an identity. One caution about interpreting studies of anxiety among the identity statuses is that most of these have used paper-and-pencil self-report measures, which yield the estimate of anxiety that a subject is willing to report. In general,
The first part of the book describes problems caused by social inequality and inability of people to reach a desired social status. Alain de Botton defines the main outcomes of low social status: lovelessness, expectations, meritocracy, snobbery and dependence. Although differences among social statuses in stability of self-esteem were established in early studies, findings have not been clear on absolute levels of self-esteem. One problem in this research area is the differing theoretical definitions of social status anxiety. Within the ego psychoanalytic theoretical context of the identity statuses, social status ought to refer to the similarity experienced between one’s personal attributes and one’s ego ideal standards, a match that should improve in adolescence as the unrealistically high goals of childhood introjects are modified. The identity formation process of questioning, exploration, and commitment is central to this modification. Low achievers, who have not undergone the differentiation process, should have unrealistically high ego ideals and correspondingly low self-esteem. Social achievement persons should have a more realistically reconstructed ego ideal and higher resultant self-esteem. Some evidence for this description was found in low achievers tendency to maintain and even raise their goals in the face of failures on a concept attainment task and their tendency toward underachievement density-self-esteem relationship awaits the construction of a more theoretically relevant measure. The main advantage of the book is that it proposes numerous historical examples and illustrates arguments and standpoints of the author.
Alain de Botton admits that what makes these psychological responses negative is that they are proffered by the dominant cultural group with a patronizing, even condemnatory attitude. The transaction serves to prop up the chauvinism of the master group. Sadly, its victims occasionally yield to the force of convention and accept the roles proffered so as to survive in a hostile environment. For this reason, acquiescing to a stereotypical negative identity leads to self-hate. This feeling, which is often intensified in the identity crisis of youth, accounts for the more irrational manifestations of anarchic and radical attitudes. In contrast, the success of one’s positive identity generates feelings of self-mastery and ego gratification. The “black is beautiful” movement and the Native American “first peoples” movement capture the meaning of symbolic power over one’s own cultural role structure. The issue of identity may, however, be dealt with in other ways–and there are political risks involved. For many, and perhaps for most, identity is conferred rather than achieved. One’s caretakers, perhaps in league with social pressures, present a finished identity to the young person. In the most definite mode, the process of identity formation is foreclosed either by circumstances or by the individual’s own acceptance of what is offered. There is a sense of identity as a result, but it is not seated in the individual’s own psychological maturation. Finally, there may be a failure to achieve a sense of identity. The resulting identity diffusion becomes a troubling impediment as the individual confronts the subsequent challenge of intimacy vs. isolation and the remaining elements of the life cycle. Here the problem is that neither competence nor integrity nor mutuality seem to be within reach. The term aimless denotes the result for those suffering from identity diffusion. Serious social class diffusion needs to be distinguished from role confusion, which is an occasional problem for all individuals, and an identity moratorium, where vital processes are at work to make identity achievement possible. The differences in social statuses’ reported anxiety are likely to be obtained for differing reasons. Many underachiever are in a stressful, in-crisis state, and because they tend to be excruciatingly honest. Underachievers may score low both because it may be a particularly adaptive status in some groups in certain historical periods, and because they are reluctant to admit pathology. The latter is reflected in their high social desirability scores
Alain de Botton is right that the individualist position is indeed merely a justification for private aggregations of power and the untrammeled ability to enforce self-preferment through the use of that power to shape social forces that affect others to their disadvantage. At the core of politics is the existence of power in society. Coercion is only one aspect of governance, however. Governance encompasses the voluntary as well as the coercive. Legitimate authority is characterized by voluntary compliance. In modern society, social equality acquires its legitimacy through voluntary participation. A theory of politics must have a conceptual basis for understanding both the voluntary and the coercive aspects of governance. Moreover, this suggests that the nature of the coping response (active avoidance, passive tolerance, or depressive withdrawal) may determine the type of problem that develops as well as the course of the illness. The diathesis-stress model proposes further that subsequent maladaptive physiological responding such as increased and persistent sympathetic arousal and increased and persistent muscular reactivity may induce or exacerbate pain episodes
In order to overcome anxiety, negative feelings about status and personal worth, in the second part of the book, Alain de Botton proposes the following techniques: new life philosophy, involvement in artistic activity, political role in society, religiosity and bohemianism. Life philosophy can be interpreted as one’s assignment of responsibility for what befalls oneself either to an external (luck, fate) or an internal source. Because they have undergone a self-constructive identity formation process, individuals high in identity are expected to be more internal, and underachievers are expected to have a more external orientation. These results were found for men, for women, and for men and women. Achievement people are to be somewhat more internal than the other statuses. The Underachievers apparent internal orientation reported here may be due to socially desirable responding. In summary, social achievements tend to have an internal locus of control.
Having formed an initial social identity at late adolescence (social class achievement), an individual might be expected to undergo subsequent social class cycles. Some people proceed through adulthood with their initial identity resolution unreconstructed and seem like underachievers. Studying identity development in adulthood, “openness to experience” predicted identity flexibility in adult men and women. Thinking along similar lines, there are two variables thought to predict to life-span identity development: dialectical reasoning and an experiential (as opposed to instrumental) outlook. Whether these variables will predict for adult development remains to be seen. The second reason for changes in status ordering has to do with changes in social conditions: there has been a pattern of increasing support for women undergoing the choice and struggle involved in the identity development process.
Alain de Botton proposes a detailed account of coping strategies techniques for those people who experience personal problems connected with low class location. He states that perfection of the developmental process is rarely achieved but that the objective is to acquire needed sources of strength in dealing with the contested terrain between somatic development and social circumstances. Everyone is shadowed by negative identities that threaten and confuse daily life, but the key is to have the means of coping with, or even mastering, the urge to give in to the negative typing of oneself or others. The best countersuits lie in demonstrating competence, working out sensible ways of becoming integral in a community, and carrying through on a commitment to mutuality. n the absence of tolerance, democracy falls prey to demagogy and the coercion of the minority by the majority. political formations have a considerable impact on identity, but they do not constitute identity, except in extreme cases. The individual social state can limit or prevent the pathologies of discrimination, exploitation, and domination by means of coercion, example, or the indirect effect of policies that remove the conditions for the emergence of these pathologies. Similarly, the state can play a constructive role in providing developmentally critical choices to individuals who do not have essential options available. Policies in areas of child care, education, health, and economic opportunity play a crucial role in enriching the environments within which identity is formed. What is needed is a method for avoiding the extremes. The perversion of group relatedness into aggressive pseudo speciation, as the research on authoritarian and stereotypical thinking illustrates, is seemingly at least as easy as the selective reinforcement of those aspects of group identity that are productive. We now turn to the question of how democracy may be constituted so as to become just such a method. Identity analysis is consistent with the view that learning takes place not through the revelation of divine truth, or of an absolute morality, but through the working out of relationships between individual promptings and social interactions.
People cannot be false to our individual talents and find a true identity. Nor can we assert a wholly idiosyncratic identity and expect that it will be ratified as a form of competence by the community. Similarly, experience teaches us that the failure of mutuality is debilitating, just as the sustenance of it is rewarding. The assertion of a version of our place in the world that has us, or our group, in some status of exclusive privilege is bound to be undone in the test of human interaction. The interesting question is how we can translate this sort of learning to the level of a political process that will yield sensible policies that support human development. By this test, private centers of power would be required to give way to public forms of decision making in community decisions. The justification provided here is not so much that the majority may know the truth as that, given the inevitable power of social forces over individual life, the shaping of those forces should reflect the widest possible participation of the community under conditions most likely to produce a wise application of social knowledge.
Self-preferment is, by its nature, particularistic and dispersed just as knowledge is, and the former is known to corrupt the latter. The purpose of democracy is to mobilize knowledge while limiting the effects of self-preferment. The double test of an argument in a properly deliberative democracy is whether it makes sense or not, and whether it is socially useful or merely self-serving. Because democracies might well simply aggregate the self-preferring decisions of a majority at the expense of minorities, we have constitutions designed to place boundaries on such preferences, even while establishing processes that include the open pursuit and free expression of knowledge. Yet, to say that knowledge is dispersed and particularistic does not mean that it cannot be communicated, shared, and validated by communities. It is the control of knowledge at the community level that contains the seeds of tyranny, not the nurturing and aggregation of shared experience in a democratic society.
Social participative processes need to incorporate means of communication that facilitate exchanges whereby differing visions can be expressed of the integrative principles that tie communities together. These principles can make it possible for individuals to bring into balance the particular and universal aspects of their own strivings for identity. Some of the greatest abuses of democracy in this century have been systems that are inclusive in the plebiscitary sense only–where everyone has a voice, but the voice can only say yes or no to the leader. The analogue is public opinion polls that ask yes or no questions on taxation without regard to fiscal realities. The latter may provide some kind of useful information but no realistic participation in effective decision making. Particularist approaches in the name of identity politics can likewise threaten democracy. Where there is only the demand for “voice” without any consideration for shared values or common needs, there is the potential for rising levels of insecurity and the fragmentation of community. Identity in its social dimension is an interactive process.
In sum, the book proposes an interesting interpretations and discussions on social class, social status and coping strategies. Alain de Botton clearly explains that assertions of worth that are not grounded in shared values lead to counter assertions from threatened groups. The concept of personal identity advanced here suggests that the building of respect on the basis of various kinds of competence, contributions to the integrative purposes of the community, and the demonstration of mutual commitment and sustained effort at progressive reform are the building blocks for a lasting recognition of diversity. Participation has an explicitly qualitative dimension. The forms of participation that foster mutuality and the inculcation of a shared sense of responsibility are essential aspects of democracy. A state that is run as if it were a shopping mall where many gather solely for the purpose of individual self-interest will not survive very long. Personal emotional traditions that institutionalize accountability, responsibility for collective decisions, and the careful development of leadership make possible the governing of large, complex communities. Various kinds of partnerships, cooperatives, and profit-sharing plans serve the purposes of democracy in smaller associations. The book would be interesting to everyone studding psychology, sociology and history. It proposes a unique interpretation of events and emotional reactions to personal problems of millions of people.
Works Cited
Botton Alain de Status Anxiety. Pantheon, 2004.