Branden defines self-esteem as:“a disposition [grounded in reality], to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life, and naturally worthy of happiness, fulfillment, success and achievement [as opposed to] fantasies of superiority and exaggerated notions of one’s accomplishments.”The “success and achievement” that Branden associates with self-esteem is not “grounded” in some objective “reality”, as he implies, but simply grounded in the social consensus one happens to live in or subscribe to i.e. in culturally relative and invented social reality. The self-es