Is selfishness ever a virtue? Modern culture overwhelmingly worships selflessness while thoroughly despising selfishness. From a very early age, most individuals are taught that putting oneself first is inherently bad or sinful. This trait is routinely denounced by parents, educators, and peers, while children are frequently disciplined through scolding, shaming, berating, humiliating, criticizing, and, in some instances, physical punishment. Religion, popular culture, and modern psychology have long contributed to this exceedingly negative attitude toward the expression of selfishness, whether observed in children, adolescents, or adults.
Societally, human communities appear to operate under the assumption that selfishness is a dangerous tendency or trait that must be forcibly exorcised as quickly as possible. This process is euphemistically referred to as socialization—a massive, systemic suppression and denial of our most basic, vital, and essential self. Sigmund Freud, in his 1929 work Civilization and its Discontents, recognized that human beings are naturally and inherently selfish. Because this innate tendency can be antithetical to creating harmonious community and collective culture, Freud argued that such selfish drives must sadly be suppressed, denied, or repressed.
Yet, despite thousands of years of suppression and societal conditioning, pathological or neurotic selfishness—what contemporary psychology defines as narcissism—is even more ubiquitous, pervasive, and problematical than ever before. Why does this paradox persist? It raises a critical question: Could human culture be inadvertently engendering more destructive selfishness by suppressing and denigrating normal, innate, and healthy selfishness? Might our entire societal approach to the problem of selfishness be grossly misguided and ultimately self-defeating?
Clearly, when society speaks of selfishness as excessive egoism, self-centeredness, greediness, narcissism, cruelty, violence, and a general disregard for the needs, rights, dignity, and feelings of others, it represents something negative, destructive, and undesirable—even if, to some extent, it remains tragically unavoidable. Noted psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut theorized in 1978 that neurotic or pathological narcissism stems directly from the childhood suppression or negation of necessary natural and healthy narcissism. This points to an axiomatic psychological truth: that which is chronically suppressed, repressed, or denied within the human psyche eventually finds expression in even more negative and destructive ways.
Another clear example of this phenomenon is the primitive emotion of anger. When chronically repressed, anger can cause various psychological and somatic symptoms, including headaches, depression, resentment, embitterment, hostility, rage attacks, aggression, and destructive or violent behavior directed toward oneself or others.
For Freud, the primordial passions of what he termed the id were defined as any powerful feeling, impulse, or emotion—such as sexuality, aggression, love, hate, Eros, or Thanatos—metaphorically described as a chaos and a cauldron full of seething excitations. Existential psychoanalyst Rollo May referred to these primal, natural human emotions, instincts, and proclivities, including anger, rage, sex, anxiety, selfishness, and the craving for power and control, collectively as the daimonic. He defined the daimonic as the urge in every living being to affirm itself, assert itself, and to perpetuate and increase itself.
When the daimonic is chronically or habitually denied or repressed, it tends to manifest in negative and destructive ways. As Carl Jung indicated through his concept of the shadow, simply suppressing or denying rage, sexual desires, or selfishness does not make those feelings or tendencies magically disappear by rendering them unconscious. On the contrary, repression only amplifies them, making them stronger, more powerful, harder to manage, and potentially far more dangerous and destructive.
This psychological dynamic applies equally to so-called selfishness. When denied or suppressed over long periods, selfishness is stripped down to its lowest, most primitive, ugly, and dangerous forms—manifesting as greed, lust, inflation, grandiosity, authoritarianism, domination, omnipotence, sadism, and psychopathy. These negative traits can take complete possession of the individual, compelling destructive behavior. However, when people learn to acknowledge, accept, embrace, and assert their intrinsic selfishness rather than routinely denying or repressing it, those same drives can manifest more constructively, prosocially, and creatively, allowing individuals to remain authentically true to themselves.
Beyond ego-driven desires, there exists another kind of selfishness—one that centers not solely on the ego, but on the deeper needs of what Jung called the self and the individual’s congenital tendency toward self-assertion. Jungian analyst John Beebe described this as a strongly self-assertive energy that is too often glibly dismissed as narcissism, noting that the daimonic represents the self’s essential capacity to claim and defend its own right to being itself.
Indeed, one of the most difficult tasks for psychotherapy patients is learning how to be selfish in the right way. This involves consciously acknowledging and asserting their most fundamental wants and needs, their deepest dreams and desires, and their most passionate emotions. For many, this contradicts everything they were ever taught and immediately engenders strong feelings of guilt. Yet, for those striving to improve the quality of their lives, mastering this form of healthy self-interest is essential—even if pathological selfishness remains a destructive way of life for others.
Jung’s analytical psychology carefully differentiates between the self and the ego, the latter being the part of the personality with which individuals most closely identify as a center of consciousness. Jung placed the ego and the persona in a subordinate and subservient position relative to the self, which he defined as the central archetype and the totality of the personality. The self encompasses both the conscious mind and the unconscious. When society thinks of selfishness, it typically envisions behavior oriented toward the wants and needs of the ego. However, when individuals refuse to acknowledge and obey the deeper desires and will of the self—which can sometimes contradict the ego—the psychological consequences can be tragic.
In biblical literature, the prophet Jonah heard an inner voice telling him to go to Nineveh, but he stubbornly chose instead to go to Tarshish to satisfy his own immediate wants. From a psychological perspective, this decision reflected the superficial desires of the ego rather than the deeper calling of the self, and Jonah ultimately paid a heavy price for fleeing from his destiny.
Every individual possesses a mysterious inner voice, soul, or self that urges them toward a distinct path, which they can either heed or ignore. Refusing to find the courage to accept and pursue this calling—despite the pressures of society, the expectations of others, or the demands of the ego—carries a heavy psychological cost.
In this light, true psychological health requires consciously acknowledging and managing, rather than suppressing, the primitive desires of the ego while courageously listening to and pursuing the deeper desires of the self. This represents a form of healthy or spiritual selfishness—becoming more attuned to the enigmatic and meaningful needs of the innermost self.