And YES! I do have reprint permission to use this for educational purposes.

Self-interest? That's doing some- thing for me. Correct! That's selfish. Wrong! Self-interest does not mean selfish,' but unfortunately for many of us, these two attributes get lumped together in our minds, stirred around, and come out the same -selfish.

Good old Webster can help us make the distinction. His dictionary describes self-interested as arising from a concern for one's own advantage and well-being. The definition of selfish runs slightly longer: "arising from a concern for one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others." In disregard of others -a big distinction. For we can regard others, feel concern for others' feelings and welfare, yet still feel concern and act upon that concern for our own welfare. For instance, while I do feel concern for my husband's feelings and welfare, at times what I want might lead to discomfort on his part. If I go ahead and pursue what I want, I would do so despite my concern for him rather than out of lack of concern. I would act self-interestedly, not selfishly.

Does that sound like rationalization? Yes -if I said all that to excuse myself for behavior that I would otherwise feel guilty about. And millions of people in our society -especially women - feel guilty about behaving selfishly. Unfortunately, these same millions also feel guilty about be- having in a self-interested manner because they indiscriminately lump it with selfish.

So it seems that if we could behave selfishly without feeling guilty, we could more easily distinguish those more numerous times when we might behave from self-interest -and realistically make the same distinction made by Webster, known for his definitions and not for his rationalizations.

How, then, do we feel guilty? Guilt, which is different from feeling regretful or sorry about one's actions, arises from two sources. First, we define or judge some action as bad or wrong, and other actions as good or valued. This act of judgment or evaluation of actions plays an important and adaptive role in that it enables us to guide our behavior in order to maximize pleasure in life and minimize pain and punishment. If I never evaluated my actions, I probably would eventually, if not quickly, behave in ways that would have serious consequences for myself. Possibly I could get locked away for life or even killed. Not much pleasure comes from that.

Assuming I somehow restrained myself from criminal acts, if I quite often behaved in an ob- noxious socially disapproved manner, I would get few of the rewards and pleasures coming from social interactions. So this process of judging our acts has importance for us all. And from this process of judging derives the feeling of regret. If I judge some behavior as wrong, such as screaming at the neighbors, and I one day find myself screaming my lungs out at them, I would certainly not feel happy about it. I would feel sorry and regretful about my actions, but not guilty.

I would feel guilty only if I thought something more. To feel guilty, I would not only have to judge my actions but also simultaneously judge myself; my worth or value as a person.

The emotion of guilt, then, comes from the erroneous evaluation or rating of one's worth as a person based on the evaluation of one's acts. (Rationalization, by the way, involves changing the evaluation of the act -e.g., "my yelling had justification, therefore I won't call my actions wrong.") The thoughts we have when we are feeling guilty go something like this: "How could I have done that? I'’m
really no good!" "I'm really rotten for having done that!" "There I go again. That proves what a crud I am!" Nothing of the kind - unless we believe the idea that the goodness or badness of our acts automatically determines our very worth as a person.

No evidence supports such a belief. Worse, the feelings of guilt this belief generates seldom help a person to correct behavior that that person considers bad or wrong. Often guilt leads us to become so caught up in condemning ourselves that we give little attention to the actual behavior that we judge bad or wrong: we feel so badly about ourselves that it doesn't seem worth the effort to attempt any change.

Many people look aghast when I point out that they need not feel guilty or condemn themselves for what they do -that feeling guilty will more likely keep them stuck rather than help them change their behavior. I get the feeling some- times that they think that I want to lead them down the path of crime, corruption and degradation. "If people didn't feel guilty," they insist, "then there'd be nothing to stop them from doing anything!"

"But," I ask, "don't you value some ways of behaving more than others? Don't you think that some ways of relating to others have more value than others, particularly in a society we might desire for ourselves? Don't you believe that some behaviors benefit you more than others, especially in the long run?"

"Well, yes. Of course I do." "So, why wouldn't you try to behave in ways you value and judge beneficial, even if you never felt guilt? Feeling guilty provides

one clue that we have violated our standards of right and wrong; but don't we also have other clues, like regret or sorrow about the action?"

"I guess so.'

These people do not convince easily. But I can't in my wildest flights of fancy imagine these same guilt-ridden, anxious, inhibited people turning into crass sociopaths simply because they quit demanding that they live up to their values and condemning themselves each time they don't. The attitude that "I want to do it" (or not do it) tends to be a far better motivator than the idea that "I don't want to feel guilty so I'll do it" (or not do it).

Let's return to the concept of self- interest. Our society teaches a number of guilt-producing ideas that interfere with acting in a self- interested manner. For instance:

.You shouldn't act selfishly. .You shouldn't hurt others. .Others should come first. .You should want to help others
.You mustn't get angry.

The last two attitudes have insidious effects because they prohibit feelings and desires, often causing people to deny or lose touch with their feelings. All of the above ideas have in common a demand or a "should." It becomes imperative, then, to uphold these standards in order to be a good person.

If you quit evaluating your total self on the basis of your actions, good or bad, what's to stop you from behaving in a callous, uncaring manner? You might -especially if you really didn't care for others but only behaved as if you did in order not to feel guilty. But I'll give odds of at least 1000 to 1 against that happening. Most of us do care, whether we have to or not. We care because many of our satisfactions in life come from our relations with others. Starting with such basic biological needs as food, water, shelter, in our specialized society we depend on others to supply these essentials for us. It therefore behooves us to get along at least minimally with others in our society: not because that makes us better people, but because we might starve or freeze to death. Not a grand reason -but a reason.

Moving from the biological to the social level, a great many satisfactions come from getting along with others. The person who consistently acts callously or indifferently to others will reap few of these rewards. Thus, a good reason for caring for others is so that they will care for us; this is, of course, not guaranteed, but obviously more likely than if we did not show concern for them. A third reason for not engaging in callous and uncaring behavior is that most of us, by the time we reach adulthood if not before, have ideas and conceptions of the kind of society we value and want to live in. These ideas may differ somewhat but will likely include ideas about how people can live together in a non-exploitive manner. Maintaining these values and conceptions of society, we would want to behave in ways consistent with them.

So we have at least three reasons for having concern for others: better reasons, I think, than needing to in order to avoid self-condemnation and guilt.

By giving up the idea that we have to behave in certain ways (unselfishly, helpfully, etc.) to maintain our personal value, in most in- stances we will still want to behave in these ways because of
the rewards they bring us. Changing our demands to preferences and desires opens up a whole new world to us, for we can now choose how to behave rather than being forced into one mold.

Because we can choose what we want to do based on our desires, we will at times experience conflicts -conflicts because we want many things for ourselves, both in the present and in the future. For instance, a woman might want a close relationship with a man, opportunity for sexual exploration with others, time to pursue cultural interests, and involvement in a career. At any given time she may judge one or more of these desires as more important than others. Which ones? It depends upon what she judges most important for her- self at the time. But at least she can make the choice.

Here are some examples of clients I have seen who felt they had no choice.

Alice feels she has no choice but to go to a Bar Mitzvah party planned by her ex-husband for their son. The guest list includes none of her friends and she foresees an unpleasant evening for herself. However, she believes (probably correctly) that if she doesn't go, her son and her other two children wouldn't want to go and would feel unhappy. What to do? She doesn't want to go but she doesn't want her children to feel unhappy. That sounds like a conflict, doesn't it? Although Alice doesn't want to go, she needs to be a good mother, unselfish and concerned only for her children's happiness. She plans to go to avoid the guilt she would otherwise feel. As a side effect, Alice berates herself for being help- less, for always giving in to what others want.

Paula thinks of herself as a rather liberated young woman: married, pursuing a career, free to come and go, having an affair with a male co-worker. She is not happy with her marriage and would like to break it off or try a separation, yet she doesn't want to hurt her husband, whom she likes as a per- son but not as a mate. What to do? Because Paula believes it would be awful (and she would be awful) if she hurt her husband, she cannot bring herself to try a separation. She then berates herself for being weak, helpless, and stuck.

Lisa, a 23-year-old secretary, very much believes that she must treat others kindly, nicely and unselfishly and quite often finds herself doing things she really does not want to do -for example, going to lunch each day with a co-worker she really does not like that much. She doesn't want to spend so much of her time with this other person, but she can- not bring herself to express this desire, which she thinks of as selfish, and by definition, awful.

Sally continually seems to find herself in relationships with men that do not satisfy her. Recently, she has become involved with a lawyer who has many attractive qualities. However, he has one quality that Sally more and more dislikes -he demands that she do what he wants, such as go to the opera even though she dislikes opera, dress the way he wants whether she wants to or not, and even get rid of her dog, which she cares for and has had for some time. Sally goes along with this until she refuses to take it any more and breaks off the relation- ship in anger. But why does she go along with it in the first place? Because she believes that she has to act unselfishly, come second in the relationship, and that expressing dissenting wishes would prove that she has no value as a person.

Alice, Paula, Lisa and Sally have given up their freedom of choice. Their belief that they must live up to certain standards and please others or otherwise suffer guilt determines their behavior. If Paula, for instance, did not condemn herself if she behaved in ways to which her husband would respond with hurt, what would she do? What would she feel?

Again, I don't know what she would do, but by refusing to condemn herself, she allows herself some choice. She might decide to remain in the marriage if she judges that the relationship is important enough for her. More likely, she would separate, feeling sad and regretful at ending the relationship and at her husband's response because she does care for him. The reason she would be initiating the separation is because she judged other of her desires and concerns more important for her in the long run. And Paula would be acting in her self-interest, not selfishly, because she does consider her husband's feelings and welfare -she simply would be choosing not to make her own welfare sub- ordinate to his.

The more a person chooses to act from self-interest, the more likely that person will act assertively. The term assertive often gets con- fused with aggressive. Aggressive implies acting against another per- son, whereas assertive implies simply expressing oneself openly, but not in an attacking or damning manner. Arnold Lazarus delineates four areas of assertion by posing the following questions:

.Can you say "no" to unreasonable requests? With whom or under what conditions can you not?
.Can you make requests? With whom and under what conditions can you not?
.Can you express negative and positive feelings? With whom and under what conditions can you not?
.Can you initiate conversations, maintain and terminate them? With whom and under what conditions can you not?

Thus it is quite possible, even probable, that most of us behave assertively in some areas, under some conditions, with some people.

More women than men in this society probably have difficulty in behaving assertively, in part be- cause of the roles we have learned to play. Often these behaviors may not advance our self-interest. We learn to behave with passivity, compliance, agreeableness, and unassertiveness. But the woman who acts otherwise risks, and may often get, censure from men and other women for being a "castrating female," probably the nicest of a number of derogatory terms.

The need for approval can maintain unassertive behavior. To say "no," to express how one feels, or to ask for favors is to take risks - the risks of incurring disapproval, even rejection. Even if we judge the chances of such negative reactions as minimal in a given situation, they could occur. The person who believes in the necessity of always obtaining approval in order to have personal worth will only rarely, if ever, intentionally risk disapproval because of what that disapproval means. On the other hand, the person who views disapproval as unfortunate (but meaning nothing about personal worth) can much more easily risk the disapproval that may result from assertive, self-interested behavior.

Disapproval may be a consequence of behaving assertively; what can result from behaving unassertively? Unassertive behavior, particularly in areas that we judge as important to us, will likely lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, self-anger or depression. Alice, who feels she cannot say no to her kids, and Paula, who cannot bring herself to tell her husband she wants a separation, are good examples. They both berate them- selves as weak, helpless, and inept. Sally, who passively goes along with her friends and does not assert herself when she feels dissatisfied, finally becomes angry with them, breaks off the relation- ship, then berates herself both for acting passively and getting angry.

A good starting place for these women and for anyone who often behaves unassertively and who wants to change is to accept your- self with this trait or habit of acting un assertively. Instead of thinking "There I go again, not sticking up for my rights or saying what I mean -what a passive, weak, shnook that makes me!", view it more like, "There I go again, not sticking up for my rights. What a bad habit to have; it makes it hard to get what I want." In other words, condemn or devalue the habit or behavior; but not yourself for having it. If you can fairly consistently accept yourself in spite of the unwanted unassertive behavior, you will much more easily be able to focus on the question, "Now if I don't like this habit, how can I go about changing it?" (Shnooks find it hard to change.)

As a next step, pick out at least two areas in which you'd like to behave more assertively. After choosing the areas to work on (e.g., saying "no," initiating conversations, expressing disagreement), practice! "Easier said than done," you might say. Yes, habits don't change magically, only with work, effort, and determination. It may not be easy, but it's certainly not too hard, meaning impossible.

So speak up. Not because you want to "get" others, or because you feel no concern for their feelings, but because you value your own feelings and welfare at least equally. If others call you selfish, you have at least two choices -ignore them or refer them to the dictionary.