Wisdom Notes on Psychology

Validation and Authenticity

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I have a different approach to the basic meaning of confirmation than Laing does. The way in which I understand confirmation is that the person seeks that which was missing in his childhood. The infant needs love and encouragement and compliments from the parents. If it did not receive these in sufficient quantity, then the infant is not confirmed in its social persona and its ego will become weak, perhaps even fragile and unstable. The less love and encouragement that the child received, the greater is the need for the confirmation of one’s self by other people. It is usually through favourable, satisfying relationships that the person seeks to fulfil himself, psychologically rather than pleasurably. By this I mean that when the need for confirmation is influencing a person, then this takes precedence over the need to seek happiness.

Initially I preferred the term “social approval” instead of  “confirmation” because it indicated better what the underlying requirement is. Then some years later I changed my terminology. I decided to use the term “validation” instead. Validation is the need to have one’s self confirmed by other people. Validation is the need to have one’s self approved by other people. Validation means that the person has a psychological requirement to become socially integrated in an harmonious and acceptable way. This need reflects the social orientation of the person.

The person with a stable ego is content to seek happiness; validation is not often an issue with that person. The person with a weak or unstable ego seeks to be validated by his peers and significant others; for such a person, the need for validation is usually more important than the pursuit of happiness.

This necessity for validation is a psychological need, not a desire. Hence it acts as a powerful incentive to become involved in social activities. The emotion that underpins this need is the self-pity mode of jealousy. (The motif of jealousy in self-pity mode is “I need a reward from other people”). A person may often only require one other person to give him or her the necessary validation. This is usually the function of a spouse or a partner.
A distinction is necessary here. The need for validation inculcates conformity in the person – this is the drawback. The person makes his behaviour and beliefs conform to the social norm. For comparison, love produces uniformity, since everyone has the same value; people can be different, but no one is better than anyone else. In social relationships, uniformity needs to be separated from conformity. [¹]

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler introduced the concept of the inferiority complex. His view was that the feeling of inferiority is derived from physical disability or from faulty relationships.[²]

I have re-interpreted Laing, and now I re-interpret Adler. I have a different approach to the basic meaning of this complex than Adler did. My interpretation of the complex is that it arises when a child is trying to develop its individuality, when it is often content to be on its own, immersed in creative pursuits or self-absorption, instead of being in a group. Like the situation with the social child, the individual child finds that not enough love and encouragement is given to it from the parents. Quite often it may find itself in a situation where its abilities and attitudes are denigrated or rejected by other children and other adults. It then strives to develop itself according to its own standards and values. It strives to develop itself so as to provide its own justification of itself, to provide its own sense of satisfaction in its own worth as a person. This is an existential need that makes the child seek an authentic life for itself.

Existential needs reflect the person’s relationship to himself.
Psychological needs reflect the person’s relationships to other people.

The inferiority complex is an existential need to authenticate one’s self by oneself; it is the need for individual accomplishment. He or she does not seek validation in order to do this. He or she does not judge themself by the criteria of other people. The emotion that underpins the inferiority complex is the vanity mode of narcissism. (The motif of narcissism in vanity mode is “I will do it my way”).

At the same time that I changed terminology, changing the need for social approval to the need for validation, I changed the inferiority complex to the need for authenticity. “Authenticity” better suited my philosophical pursuits than “inferiority complex” did.

Validation means that the child seeks approval from other people.
Authenticity means that the child seeks to be true to itself.

Origins of these two Needs

Both the need for validation and the need for authenticity arise from the excessive criticism, punishment or denigration of the child by the parents or other significant adults, or even its older siblings. How the child responds depends on its orientation. The social child, orientated on jealousy, feels that its social relationships are of poor quality and hence is motivated to immerse itself in group or gang membership activities. By contrast, the individual child, orientated on narcissism, feels that its individuality is of poor quality and therefore is motivated to immerse itself in creativity and self-absorption.

Authenticity and validation can be thought of as mental complexes or states of mind that everyone is prone to, but the intensities with which they affect us differ amongst people. These character complexes are aspects of bonding [³] and relate to the sensitivity and anxieties of the child. The more sensitive and anxious the child is, the more intense will be the bonding to one or both parents, and so the more intense will be the need for authenticity and the need for validation.

The main issue that determines how important, or not important, authenticity is to a child is his degree of sensitivity. For a child of low sensitivity, then anxiety is more significant and this will lead him to seek validation within the family and his groups. For a child of greater sensitivity, the need for authenticity will affect him more than his anxieties, and so propel him into a search for individuality. Initially authenticity and validation are likely to go hand-in-hand, though eventually one becomes more pronounced than the other.

The child creates its identity from the way that it learns to handle the needs for authenticity and validation. In more general terms, the psychological forces that have been acting on the adult since childhood have strongly shaped his or her present character and sense of identity. For example, if a child or adult has a strong need for authenticity, then he makes negative value judgements about himself. When done frequently, it erodes his self-confidence and builds up self-hate for himself. Whereas the social child tends to make negative value judgements about other people, thus building up his own sense of self-worth.

Comparison of these two Needs

When a child’s personal growth hits long-term problems, then two common reactions occur. The orientation towards a social focus produces a need for validation; this kind of response is a psychological one. Whereas, the orientation towards individuality produces a need for authenticity; this kind of response is an existential one. As mentioned above:
Validation has the emotional basis of jealousy (self-pity mode).
Authenticity has the emotional basis of narcissism (vanity mode).

Validation and authenticity are binary needs. This relationship ensues because jealousy (self-pity mode) and narcissism (vanity mode) are emotions that are binary to each other.

What I am doing here is comparing a psychological need with an existential need. The two needs are qualitatively different, and have to be separated in order to avoid confusion about motivation. Some writers have thought that when a person strives to attain a social goal then he/she is acting from the need for authenticity. This is not so; the person is acting from the need for validation. The need for authenticity drives the person to attain skills that emphasise his or her individuality, whilst the need for validation drives the person to attain social skills.

One of the difficulties of being a creative artist or thinker is that the sensitivity that the person has acquired may be derived as a compensation to a deep sense of inferiority. The problem for the artist or thinker is that although the need for authenticity can drive creative skills, creativity can also produce a barrier to the attainment of social skills. The artist or thinker finds that their creativity sets them apart from normal people. Then he/she begins to despise their creativity and yearns to be like other people (reflecting the need for validation).

Thomas Mann, in his short story Tonio Kroger [4], describes the predicament of the artistic male who wants to reject his sensitivity because it produces an almost impassable barrier to normal relationships. He yearns for familiar human happiness, for the commonplace, the banal – in other words, the normal, respectable and admirable concerns of ordinary people. What the artist or thinker recognises belatedly is that the satisfaction of fulfilling the need for authenticity does not necessarily lead to the satisfaction of acquiring social skills in everyday relationships.

What we have to recognise is that needs do not necessarily cross-link, by which I mean that the fulfilment of one need does not usually help to fulfil the other needs that a person has. In particular, the attainment of social skills does not automatically lead to the attainment of skills of individuality, or vice versa. For example, an individual may focus on achieving a difficult personal ambition, such as becoming a self-made millionaire. Then he hopes that his money will buy social approval; but usually he attracts only sycophants. Or a person may focus on cultivating social popularity; but when fashion changes or the breath of scandal touches him, he is left in the cold as his friends abandon him and he finds that he has not achieved anything worthwhile within himself.
The two needs of validation and authenticity are separate and distinct, and have to be addressed separately if harmony is to be attained.

Separating the Two Needs

In the early 20th century, ideas about the hidden aspects of the mind were in their infancy and hence clearly separating various psychological and existential influences was not easy to do. In my view, what Adler did was to mix inferiority and social approval together as one need, the need to be an individual. The idea of a distinct social need came later, with Laing’s concept of “confirmation”.

What I have done is to improve on Adler’s idea by separating the two needs. This is not as easy as it may first appear, especially when we consider social institutions such as schools. At school these needs inter-twine. Schools often make a child feel inadequate and belittled. In this situation, which one of the two needs is being activated?

The child may focus on his individuality, at the expense of focusing on developing social skills. He may desire to attain something that he likes and is willing to put in the necessary effort long-term. If this desire is over-emphasised, he is likely to lose friends and become a loner. Now if circumstances frustrate his ability to attain his dreams, and he compares himself unfavourably to other people who have succeeded, then he will develop an inferiority complex, that is, the need for authenticity.

On the other hand, if he desires friends, he will put friendship and social attainments above personal attainments. He is likely to become a very sociable person. His need for validation is easily fulfilled. If this desire is over-emphasised, his individuality becomes eclipsed.

For example, if he is bottom of the class in some subject that he likes, his need for authenticity will spur him to better himself. Whereas if he is bottom of the class in some subject that he does not like, he will not develop the need for authenticity (for that subject). Instead, he is likely to focus on his need for validation by getting a name for himself, even if it is only as a trouble-maker.

If he does not have many friends, but has a close friendship with one or two others, he does not intensify his need for validation. However, if he does not have friends, then he does intensify his need for validation. He lacks friends because he lacks social skills and feels awkward in the presence of his peers. It can become difficult to make friends of the opposite sex. He may become very lonely.

The Test for separating One Need from the Other

Your views about yourself can belittle you, and the criticisms of other people can also belittle you. This can make you dislike someone. The decisive test for separating the two needs is this: what person do you direct your dislike to. Whom do you dislike?

• If you dislike yourself, then this implies the need for authenticity is being felt strongly at that moment, trying to influence you to be more authentic.


• If you dislike the other person, then the need for validation is uppermost at that moment (if it were not uppermost, then what that person said to you would not bother you).

These two needs can inter-twine. So sometimes you can dislike yourself, and at other times you can dislike other people.

Some children try to get round their problems with sociability by becoming brilliant at some particular subject in order to attract friends. But they fail in this. What they discover is that becoming brilliant in something (that is, being motivated by the need for authenticity) does not enable them to develop social skills. So fulfilling the need for authenticity will not enable the child to get friends. The child gets friends by fulfilling his need for validation.

The two needs are most problematic in a person’s youth, which is the prime time for exploring oneself. Most people don’t know what narcissism means, but this does not stop them from experiencing it. Every time you go to a party, feel excited, dance and have a good time, you are in a mood of narcissism most of the time. Then between the dances, jealousy takes over as you engage in flirting.

Handling these Needs

Psychological and existential complexes often have profound influences on our character and the ways that we interact with other people. In learning to handle these complexes, the first approach is one of re-orientation. We tend to think of them as being bad or merely just an irritation, but that is not why we first embraced them. When we were a child, we developed these complexes because they offered some positive advantage to us; they became ways of handling difficult situations. Although they are defensive and limiting, they were better than nothing. Hence they were useful to us in our time of childhood. (I am not saying that they were good or bad; I am just saying that they were useful). Hence the result is that they have strongly shaped our present character. Now we are an adult, we may find them limiting. We have outgrown the positive advantage and can only see the negative grip they have on us: this is why we think that they are bad. So the first step of re-orientation is to give up the view that they are bad.

Once we stop devaluing these complexes, we can begin to discover just how they have shaped our character, without being prematurely prejudiced. Since they are basic needs, the effect that they have had is to create strengths of character in some ways and limitations of character in other ways. The overall pattern is part of our present sense of identity.

As an adult, if we still find some usefulness in validation and authenticity, then we have no desire to change. But when we begin to realise that they are now more of an obstacle than a help, then we can begin to change. By the time we have reached the desire to change, we have had these problems for many years, and so unfortunately it will also take many years to resolve them. There are no short cuts to resolving psychological and existential problems, because what we have to do is to transform the problems and our outlook on them. The problems have made us sensitive to some aspects of relationships, and we have to learn to use that sensitivity to positive advantage. We learn to handle authenticity by learning about ourself; and we learn to handle the need for validation by learning more harmonious social skills.

Problems with Sensitivity

We may have a greater degree of sensitivity than the average person has. Initially, this sensitivity is directed at ourself, and we become self-critical. Often, later on, we begin directing our criticisms at other people instead, and we can become skilled at detecting the ways that people try and manipulate us. We can see more of the hidden agendas that people have than the average person can.

This skill often brings problems. The sensitive person can sometimes tell an average person what his (the average person) real motive is, whilst that average person will deny it (because he is unaware of his real motive). Hence normal relationships, whether personal, work, family, friends, etc, can be quite confusing for a sensitive person. It is not a question of who is right or wrong. It is simply that the sensitive person has more awareness of how the mind works than the average person has. But the people that he looks up to don’t have this awareness, and therefore usually contradict him or deny the accuracy of his feelings about any psychological issue.

Now many sensitive people can utilise their sensitivity in creative ways by becoming artistic, or by becoming involved in some bohemian culture. However, many sensitive people focus their sensitivity on the mind, and it is this class of person that normally gets labelled as being “problematic”. Such people may have a fragile sense of personal identity, and one effect of this is that they are very vulnerable to negative criticisms from other people, and so they often become wary of normal social inter-actions. If they are too fragile then they may develop some form of mental disorder.

[¹]. My ideas on emotions are on the Home page, in the articles on Emotion. [1].

[²]. H. Orgler,  Alfred Adler: The Man and His Work. [2]

[³]. I have a section on bonding, the first article is Overview of Bonding. [3]

[4]. Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger. This is a short story contained in Death in Venice and Other Short Stories. Heinemann, Secker & Warburg, 1983. [4]

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