The Good Kind of Selfish: When Honoring Yourself Is Healthy

“Selfish” is one of those words that arrives with its verdict already attached. We hear it and picture greed, entitlement, or someone taking the last slice without so much as a glance around the table.

But what if that reflexive condemnation causes us to confuse self-absorption with something essential: the ability to recognize and honor our own needs?

In “Honoring Thy Self: The Unsung Virtues of Selfishness,” clinical and forensic psychologist Stephen A. Diamond argues that some people do not need to become less selfish. They need to learn how to be selfish in the right way.

The difference between ego and self

Diamond draws an important distinction between serving the ego and listening to the deeper self. The first can produce narcissism, domination, and indifference to other people. The second means acknowledging our limits, desires, convictions, and calling without denying anyone else’s dignity.

That is not permission to become a tyrant with a wellness vocabulary. Healthy selfishness still has guardrails: empathy, responsibility, and an honest awareness that other people possess selves worth honoring, too. It simply refuses the idea that goodness requires permanent self-erasure.

What we bury does not disappear

Drawing on Freud, Heinz Kohut, Rollo May, and Jung’s concept of the shadow, Diamond suggests that chronically repressing normal self-assertion may help turn it into something more distorted. Anger denied can return as resentment or rage. Needs ignored can reappear as manipulation, grandiosity, or an appetite that never feels satisfied.

The healthier move is not to obey every impulse. It is to bring those impulses into consciousness, examine them, and decide which ones express our deepest values rather than our loudest cravings.

A better question

Instead of asking, “Am I being selfish?” we might ask: “What kind of selfishness is this?” Am I protecting a genuine limit, pursuing meaningful work, or finally saying what I need? Or am I treating other people as scenery in a story starring me?

That distinction turns selfishness from a moral label into a tool for discernment. Sometimes the most generous life begins when we stop abandoning the person who has to live it.

Read Stephen A. Diamond’s full argument at Psychology Today.