The Seba library treats Self Pity in 8 passages, across 6 authors (including Maté, Gabor, Hillman, James, Horney, Karen).
In the library
8 passages
Self-pity takes a kind of solace in seeing oneself as an unfortunate character, beleaguered by fate. It undermines healing by reinforcing the stories that keep us ensconced in a world of hurt, and by discouraging responsibility for our own point of view.
Maté defines self-pity as a narrative-reinforced posture that, unlike self-compassion, actively impedes healing by substituting victimhood-identity for authentic acknowledgment of pain.
Maté, Gabor, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022thesis
there is a self-pity which is perhaps harder to realize because it is harder to admit. This differs from the self-pity which is rather a self-justification and defense.
Hillman distinguishes a superficial, defensive self-pity from a deeper, theologically suppressed form that is difficult to access precisely because religious tradition has long prohibited genuine self-love.
Hillman, James, Insearch: Psychology and Religion, 1967thesis
feeling victimized thus becomes a protection against his self-hate, it is a strategical position, to be defended vigorously. The more vicious the self-accusations, the more frantically must he prove and exaggerate the wrong done to him
Horney analyzes the feeling of being a victim — the structural substrate of self-pity — as a defensive maneuver that shields the neurotic from the full weight of self-hate by externalizing it onto perceived perpetrators.
Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
the problem of neurotic suffering. Every neurosis entails real suffering, usually more than a person is aware of. The self-effacing type suffers under the shackles that prevent his expansion, under his self-abuse, under his ambivalent attitude toward others.
Horney insists that the self-effacing neurotic's suffering is genuine, not theatrical, implicitly separating authentic suffering from the performed self-pity associated with secondary gain.
Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
The Adult Children of Alcoholics textual index situates self-pity as a discrete, named concern within a broader constellation including self-hate, self-abandonment, and self-forgiveness in recovery literature.
INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012supporting
There must first be some sympathy for the suffering self, some experiencing of this suffering, before the recognition of beating himself down can set going a constructive move.
Horney argues that a degree of compassionate self-regard — not the same as self-pity — is a precondition for therapeutic movement out of self-hate.
Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting
The hidden side of masochism is willful tyranny. The misery of this woman's envy veiled her rigidity.
Moore's case study of chronic misery and envy illustrates how self-pity can serve as a mask for controlling, masochistic dynamics, connecting self-pity structurally to masochism and envy.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992aside
the instincts of pity, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, which Schopenhauer had gilded, deified, and projected into a beyond for so long that at last they became for him 'value-in-itself,' on the basis of which he said No to life and to himself.
Nietzsche's genealogical critique of pity as life-negation provides a philosophical backdrop against which depth psychology's more ambivalent treatment of self-pity must be read.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887aside