THE SIX PILLARS OF SELF-ESTEEM

Yet another rehash of his favorite subject from Branden (How to Raise Your Self-Esteem, 1987, etc.), a monthly columnist for New Woman magazine. Impelled to write, he says, by the recent explosion in the self-esteem movement, as well as by the ``abyss'' between his own understanding of the subject and that of most other writers, Branden—who's been lecturing on self-esteem since the 1950's- -claims that this new work is ``the climax of all the work that preceded it.'' Here, he looks first at the nature and sources of self-esteem, then examines what actions can be taken to generate and sustain that quality, and, finally, considers external influences on self-esteem: the home, the workplace, and the general culture. The ``six pillars'' of the title are elaborated as six actions that, if practiced, promise to bring about great changes in one's life. They include the arts of living consciously and purposefully; self-acceptance; self-responsibility; self- assertiveness; and personal integrity. Chapters on each feature sentence-completion exercises, a staple of Branden's mode of therapy. The idea is that rapid and repeated completion of a series of sentence fragments (``If I pay more attention to how I deal with people today...) increases self-knowledge. Throughout, in order to lighten the text, Branden also incorporates lots of lists, headings, and anecdotes. Two appendices prove a measure of the author's own self-esteem: One is a critique of others' ideas on the subject, while a second, entitled ``Recommendations for Further Study,'' outlines 11 of Branden's previous books and plugs his L.A.-based institute on self-esteem. Inflated and repetitious.