And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and this is episode 172.

It's titled External Validation.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Ever heard of The Looking Glass Self?

Hmm?

The Looking Glass Self is a concept created by sociologist Charles Horton Cooley back in 1902.

All that time ago, it states that rather than a person's sense of self growing out of their internal perceptions, it instead grows out of the interactions with and the perceptions of other people. In a nutshell, it can be summed up with the following phrase which I love.

Are you ready? I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think that you think I am.

And this is a fabulously modern concept, I think. Bearing in mind, back in 1902, doctors would

regularly prescribe heroin as a cough syrup. We were so out of touch. And as for psychology, it was a very dark time, really.

We had no idea about attachment theory. So back in those days, it was suggested, no, no, that's

not quite strong enough a word. It was encouraged that children were rejected and abandoned by

their mothers so as to make them emotionally strong.

I want to do an episode about attachment theory at some point because I think it's amazing.

So back in those days, we were very psychodynamic, as it's called, and analytical.

Therapy was all about Freud's idea of psychosexual development and dream analysis more than anything,

and useful as elements of those might end up being most of it really hasn't stood the test of time.

But the idea of the looking glass self has.

I'll say that phrase again because it makes so much sense now, let alone 120 years ago.

Are you ready?

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