I picked this book up because I greatly respect (if not entirely agree with) the philosophies of Ayn Rand and enjoyed Branden's revision of 'My Years With Ayn Rand'. I was expecting another fresh look at the self, something detailed, something useful. I was sorely disapointed.

Anyone who has had any exposure to Rand's Objectivist philosophies or ever thought for themselves at all will find this book incredibly dull. Thankfully, it's written in short bursts of a pharagraph or two at a time, seperated by various repetitive headers, unfortunately, the content of each paragraph burst is just as repetitive as the headers.

Meant for the ignorant, if you have any sense of self-worth whatsoever, this book will be of no use to you - there's nothing new there.

I totally agree with the first review of the paperback version - Dr. Branden concentrates on defining self esteem, and goes into great detail how it can be destroyed during childhood, but doesn't give a clue how to go about repairing it.

The lectures (and that's what these tapes are: recorded during one of his lecture series on an unknown date and probably abridged) seem to be addressing an audience of psychiatry students. His sentence structure is complicated and unwieldy, and sometimes difficult to understand, even for a college-educated person. It's not entertainment.

Finally, he winds up with a discussion of relationships that seems to start out with the assumption that most women are still housewives and are subservient to their man. I'm a man, but I was shaking my head at his old-school regard for women. He talks like it was discovered only recently that women have any intellect.

Not a good tape if you want to get fast answers to improving yourself. Buy it only if you are interested in the deeper roots of a lack of self-esteem, from an academic standpoint. Even then, you'd probably be better off buying the paperback and saving your time and cash.

According to Nathaniel Branden in this book, self-esteem is...

1) Confidence in our ability to think and cope with the basic challenges of life

2) Confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, and to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

However, he seems to focus mostly on #1 (and at that, the first part of #1, our ability to think), and little or not at all on our ability to cope, or #2 our right to be happy, etc.

Most of the book is about defining self-esteem, much less about where it comes from, or how to get it or repair it (he states this as the purpose in the introduction, to be fair).

Nonetheless, I got a new perspective on self-esteem. I learned it's not just "self-love", but confidence in our MIND, that is, our ability to understand our lives, ourselves, and the world, and therefore to make wise choices that lead to success in reaching our goals, if we are committed to the truth, the facts, and perceiving and accepting reality to the best of our ability.

It helped me understand why I have done as well as I have in the face of childhood trauma; because deep down I had a shred of faith that life could be better, and that I was smart enough to make sense of the chaos around me, if I learned enough and applied my mind enough.