The Big Ego Trip

This is an important and timely book. It is so helpful to have attitudes to self-esteem traced historically and culturally and then critiqued from the viewpoint of the Christian gospel. For me, one of the most valuable benefits has been to see how a human-centred cultural trend has crept unnoticed into the church. This has been a salutary warning to me personally. The book deserves to be widely read both by thinking Christians and also by those outside the Christian church who want a fresh insight into the counter-cultural surprise of the gospel of grace. I commend it warmly.

Glynn Harrison uses his vast experience in psychiatric practice and research to examine the cultural and psychological roots of the incredibly influential self esteem movement. He summarizes, digests, and evaluates huge amounts of research and explains what he is doing with humor and many helpful examples, thus making complex ideas accessible to anyone. His conclusions are startling and have big consequences for education, psychology and counseling. This is a superb example of a sharp Christian mind at work helping us to evaluate the ways we have been seduced and brainwashed by our culture.

When I read the introduction to this book, I thought I might like it. I don't - I love it. It is high time that the urban myth of self-esteem was seriously questioned and intelligently trashed. This book does that and more. The reader gains a well-researched, thorough analysis of the history of the love-yourself ideology and of its impact on culture and (sadly) the church. But the second half of the book answers the questions raised by this malignant ideology both theologically and practically. Brilliant Biblical uncommon sense for parents, youth workers, teachers, pastors and students of psychology everywhere.