Here is a nice idea that I found in two apparently unrelated books of the nineties, "The Evolving Self" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1994) and "Escaping the Self" by Roy Baumeister (1991). The self they are talking about (which if I understand well has been renamed "self-concept" for the sake of disambiguation) is a pretty old construct :

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down, - not necessarily in the same degree for each thing.

(William James, the Principles of Psychology, 1890)

Here is the common idea in Csiksz. and Baumeister : modern western culture values the building of the biggest possible self-concept. A striking example is the self-concept of the modern woman, who expects to be professionally successful, to maintain an attractive face, to be good in bed, to be a good mother, to keep the home tidy, to stay fit, to maintain a social network, to complete her personal development, to take care of her old mom, and many other things. Given the above example, it is not exactly rocket science by C. and B. to emphasize that the optimal size of the self-concept in not the maximal size that one can achieve. Says Baumeister in a metaphor (skip it if you don't need a metaphor) :

Suppose society gave each person an enormously large, beautiful, and expensive house, and suppose that maintaining it was assigned to be one of the most important purposes in the person's life. Suppose, too, that there were no such thing as home insurance, so that if something happened to your house, you would have to deal with the loss and problem on your own.

At first, each person would be delighted to have such a wonderful possession and would experience great joy and satisfaction. BUt then it would also make great demands on the individual's time and energy. Considerable upkeep is required for a house, and the larger and more elaborate the house is, the more upkeep is involved. Moreover, because everyone would be equally concerned with owning a marvelous house, comparisons would soon start to focus on small details and imperfections. This would lead to a general obsession with minutiae and anticipating all the things that could go wrong. Meanwhile, one would tend to forget that this excessive concern was preventing one from traveling and perhaps enjoying other pleasures or opportunities that one might have had if one did not have the house.

Before long, people would find themselves tied down by their houses, perhaps feeling like servants rather than owners.(...) And if something bad happened to the house that could not be easily fixed, people would have to live in distress, knowing that everyone who passed by would see their disgrace.

(Roy Baumeister, Escaping the Self, 1991)

From that common observation, Csiksz. and Baumeister derive different but equally interesting conclusions. For Csiksz., we have biologically evolved a tendency to inflate our self-concept which might have been adaptive back when the nomade hunters-gatherers encountered severe limitations on how big a self-concept they could grow. That tendency is now blowing in our face because we have unprecedented opportunities to inflate ourselves. The tendency is now even be culturally snowballing. Csiksz. prescribes that we should be very wary of our drive for inflation and override it when it is not playing in our favor.

For Baumeister, things are quite different because he thinks we have been equipped (by biological evolution I guess, but Baumeister is not into evo-psych) with instinctive mechanisms for deflating the self-concept when it rises to some "too high maintenance" alert status. Those mechanisms are at work and partial explanatory factors in behaviors that are usually seen as slightly to severely self-defeating, like suicide (talk about self-defeating!), alcoholism, sexual masochism, and even spirituality.

Usual questions, what do you think about it, does C. or B. have the better interpretation, and where can I find more about it ? While I can find many articles of the 80s and early 90s about the self-concept, it seems at first glance to be a bit out of fashion now, and I am not sure why.

Funny... I had that question in the pipeline for one month, and the day after I ask it I stumble upon the following book when doing an unrelated search : The Curse of the Self: Self-Awareness, Egotism, and the Quality of Human Life by Mark R. Leary, 2007.

Do you think I should read it ? I think so.