Customer Reviews

Escaping the Self: Alcoholism, Spirituality, Masochism, and Other Flights from the Burden of Selfhood

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"Escaping the Self" is a manifestly brilliant work of social psychology and social criticism. Reading the book, I recapture the feelings of insight that originally attracted me to psychology.

The main idea of the book is that many difficult to explain behaviors, such as masochism and suicide, result from a need to escape - and that this need to escape is very specific escape from self-consciousness. Baumeister goes into detail about the various motivations for this need to escape and how they motivate different forms of escape, and also details social trends that have magnified the burden of escape from the self.

This is in many ways the kind of book I would love to write. Baumeister is able to see the implicitly accepted dogmas and flaws of the culture he lives in, much like a Nietzsche, before they are generally recognized. It's interesting that this work is out of print now - and the idea not generally appreciated by those who could best put it to work. This pattern occurs with many 'heretical' thinkers. And since the works details more the downside of our obsession with self - something we do not recognize as a choice, or something unusual - this might explain the book's status.

Easily the most interesting social/behavioral science book I have read in a long time - it also opens many new avenues for scholarship to the careful reader. Highly reccomended.

Whatever your drug of choice, read this! An amazing theorist and scientist who is an aclaimed social psychologist and accomplished writer. Roy Baumeister has taskled issues that are relevant to all of us. He is able to concisely express his theories regarding the actions of the human species...Essentially the "why" of what we do what we do. A great read for anyone, but especially valuable for those interested in psychology and people in general. An essential tool to the "future-counselor." A must read!

I have read several of Baumeister's books. I first read "Escaping the Self" in 1992. I have re-read it several times.

I have never met anyone who "likes" this book. But I know many people who recommend it.

It is not a comforting book, and as one other reviewer noted, it does not include much in the way of remedy.

But the book is an enlightenment - often a painful one, even for someone who does not quite qualify for any of the "isms" in the title.

What I find most useful about the book is its clinical dissection of how people act out on an over burdened identity. The initial premise is that we were probably wired for a much simpler world with far fewer identity options. Now that we have more options, we find the burden of keeping up our identity a kind of constant emotional maintenance. If we have "too much" identity burden, then we bust out in one or more kinds of reactionary behavior.

The way Baumeister weaves us through the thinking is not always linear, but full of "Aha" moments.

So what is the self? Baumeister has an early section by that title. but his response hardly seems a clear definition. It would seem that over 2,000 years ago, Buddhism gave more thought to what the self was. And Buddhism is not scientific. One would expect a modern social scientist could do better. "Self can be understood to be a physical entity overlaid with meaning". Seem clear? Seem scientific? Baumeiser is never precise about what "self" is. He overloads it with attributions. It's self-esteem, self-control, self-image,self-whatever-its-convenient-to-call-it-at-the-moment. You know what he means. Don't you?

After all, it is what we are all escaping from, supposedly.

Baumeister discusses some behaviors: suicide, masochism, alcoholism, binge eating and religous exercise. These he asserts are evidence of escaping from the self. Rather than introduce you to these behaviors first so that you could see how the idea of "escape from the self" is derived, he talks about these in the latter half of the book. After he has elaborated on how the self he hardly defines can be a burden and how escape from whatever that self is generally works. He does this as a speculative exercise, asserting what takes place, with little or no experimental support presented. When he discusses the behaviors such as suicide and masochism, he only says a little bit about each one before asserting (a lot) how each demonstrates an "escape from the self".

Saying that it would be "reckless to try to explain all forms of behavior by ... by the notion of escaping the self", he proceeds to note as escapes such activities as distance running, surfing, skiing, and being a sports fan". So he's viewing a lot as possible "escape from self". And with the self not well defined and with escape not well defined, it becomes hard to say why he would view one behavior as an escape and not another.

"Playing a game may provide escape in the sense that one abandons consideration of one's normal identity and submerges awareness in the game". So how does Baumeister see that someone else is doing all that?

I thought science depended on good definitions, good experiments and thorough analysis, so the escape I recommend is escaping this book. Alcoholism, suicide, masochism, binge eating and spirital exercises seem behaviors worth better analysis. Even if these are "escapes from self", what then to do about each? I didn't find that addressed. Baumeister seemed content having asserted each was an escape.