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What Is Self-Love? Redefinition of a Controversial Construct

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Abstract

Self-love is a controversial construct: Throughout history, views on self-love have been polarized as “good” (associated with well-being and health) versus “bad” (associated with narcissism and selfishness). Although predominately equated in academic literature, self-love and narcissism are in fact opposites. However, there is a lack of adequate research, debate, and empirical work on the construct of self-love and its contributing factors. We attempted to address the limitations of previous studies and aim to propose a methodologically sound model of self-love. Arguing that psychotherapists benefit from a broad and differentiated understanding of self-love, we administered 13 semistructured interviews with regular psychotherapists, psychotherapist authors of books or journal articles on self-love, and psychotherapists/coaches with long experience in group work on self-love. Interview questions focused on specifying self-love and its components. An inductive thematic analysis yielded a preliminary model with three main themes: (a) self-contact, defined as giving attention to oneself; (b) self-acceptance, defined as being at peace with oneself; and (c) self-care, defined as being protective of and caring for oneself. We first validated the findings with the same sample of experts and then assessed our preliminary model’s consistency with the existing literature and its comprehensiveness, before augmenting and modifying the model to arrive at a final model of self-love. The relationships with other self-related constructs such as self-compassion and self-esteem are further examined. Results shed new light on the construct and provide a basis for further research examining the link between self-love, psychological health, and well-being.
What Is Self-Love? Redefinition of a Controversial Construct
Eva Henschke and Peter Sedlmeier
Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology
Self-love is a controversial construct: Throughout history, views on self-love have been
polarized as good(associated with well-being and health) versus bad(associated
with narcissism and selshness). Although predominately equated in academic litera-
ture, self-love and narcissism are in fact opposites. However, there is a lack of adequate
research, debate, and empirical work on the construct of self-love and its contributing
factors. We attempted to address the limitations of previous studies and aim to propose
a methodologically sound model of self-love. Arguing that psychotherapists benet
from a broad and differentiated understanding of self-love, we administered 13 semi-
structured interviews with regular psychotherapists, psychotherapist authors of books or
journal articles on self-love, and psychotherapists/coaches with long experience in
group work on self-love. Interview questions focused on specifying self-love and its
components. An inductive thematic analysis yielded a preliminary model with three
main themes: (a) self-contact,dened as giving attention to oneself; (b) self-acceptance,
dened as being at peace with oneself; and (c) self-care,dened as being protective of
and caring for oneself. We rst validated the ndings with the same sample of experts
and then assessed our preliminary models consistency with the existing literature and
its comprehensiveness, before augmenting and modifying the model to arrive at a nal
model of self-love. The relationships with other self-related constructs such as self-
compassion and self-esteem are further examined. Results shed new light on the con-
struct and provide a basis for further research examining the link between self-love,
psychological health, and well-being.
Keywords: self-love, self-contact, self-acceptance, self-care, narcissism
Peter Sedlmeier https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7998-6313
This research was made possible by a scholarship from the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (Foundation
of the German Economy). We further gratefully acknowledge the help provided by Professor Ruch from
University of Zurich in early stages of the study.
Transcripts and materials from the study are available from the corresponding author on request.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eva Henschke, Department of Psychology,
Chemnitz University of Technology, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany. Email: eva.henschke@psychologie.tu
-chemnitz.de
1
The Humanistic Psychologist
©2021 American Psychological Association
ISSN: 0887-3267 https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000266
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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2023, Vol. 51, No. 3, 281–302
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This article was published Online First October 7, 2021.
... self-acceptance is defined as being at peace with oneself. self-care means being protective of and caring for oneself (Henschke & sedlmeier, 2023). corral-Verdugo et al. (2021 found positive associations between self-care and altruism, a part of prosocialness, and proecological behavior. ...
... Regarding the relationships within the aspects of connectedness, self-love was associated with nature connectedness (corral-Verdugo et al., 2021;Rahe & Jansen, 2023) and spirituality, but not with prosocialness. the construct of self-love, as defined by Henschke and sedlmeier (2023), is rather new, though little research is known about correlations between spirituality and self-love. the non-significant correlation between self-love and prosocialness is in line with another study using the same methods (Rahe & Jansen, 2023). ...
... to conclude, the concept of self-love as a positive attitude of self-kindness (Henschke & sedlmeier, 2023) is strongly associated with people's psychological well-being. Besides self-love, nature connectedness positively predicts well-being and mediates the association between self-love and well-being. ...
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