Sublime

In 1995, two social psychologists, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, put forth what they called “the belongingness hypothesis.” They proposed that “a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation . . . and that much of what human beings do is done in the service of belongingness.” Other thinkers, including Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow, had made

Your habitual ways of interacting with the important people in your life tell us a great deal about the defense mechanisms you typically use.

It turns out the person we trust the most is—ourselves.

We may also try to prove our worth by taking on tasks that are beyond our talents,4 suffering more damage to our self-esteem as a result.

you may need to challenge ideas about yourself that you and others have come to take for granted.

Moore: No, because your ego is not fragmenting if the group serves effectively for you as a defense against your grandiosity. You are no longer being fragmented after you join a group that can truly contain your grandiosity for you. Belonging to a group perceived as an adequate container enables you to offload your personal grandiosity onto the

The sobering truth is that we have the capacity for very few conscious acts of self-control in a day.