Am I Allowed to Be Myself? Längle's Third Fundamental Motivation

Someone who has their living space (the first fundamental motivation) and finds value in their life (the second fundamental motivation) can already live, in a certain sense, and what they have is good and solid. If we picture it as building a house, the shell is finished, the services are in, the water, the heating, the furniture. But something is missing. What is missing is the individual stamp, one's own style.

A full life is not served by having just any bed, any wardrobe and any pictures in the room. Do those things go together according to my taste? Do I like them? What is at stake, transposed to one's own life, is what is mine, what is properly my own. It is not enough to be able to say “how good that I exist”. Once that much is secured, life challenges us again and asks that we also be ourselves.

The guiding question of this third fundamental motivation is therefore one that can become uncomfortable, but that is necessary. Is it right, the way I am? Can I stand behind myself and behind what I do? Am I myself, just as I am? Can I be myself? To what extent is my life really mine?

The longing to be recognised as a person

What is at stake at this level is that the unique way each of us has of living, thinking, feeling and acting should be recognised. It is not enough to be accepted in general terms, we want to be accepted as the people we actually are. And that is no mere whim, because for Existential Analysis being a person means precisely being someone unrepeatable, someone no one else could stand in for. Being authentic is not, then, an added aspiration on top of life, but the way we come to be genuinely persons rather than a copy of what is expected of us.

This is why it belongs to our condition to want to be able to look others in the eye, and ourselves too. Each of us has, in a figurative sense, a face of our own that we want to keep. And it is why it hurts so much to be condemned, rejected, looked down on or laughed at, because what is under attack is not what we do but what we are. We need someone to recognise the particular way in which we have made our life, and not some generic version of us.

From this follows something that is often mistaken for selfishness. If being a person is being someone unique, then one has to be able to tell what is mine from what belongs to others, and to mark that line. Without it there is nobody there, only someone who fits in with what is expected and ends up living a life they do not recognise as their own. Being authentic, in this sense, does not consist in doing as one pleases, but in being able to stand behind who one is, what one does and how one has come this far, without having to apologise for it.

The three conditions, attention, fairness and appreciation

In order to be able to be oneself, to develop as one is and not be left exposed to injury and alienation, three conditions are needed. It is worth pausing on each of them.

Respectful attention, being genuinely seen

In order to be myself I need to be seen by another, I need someone's attentive gaze turned towards me. Someone treating me with respectful attention means that they give me their attention, that they take me into account, that they respect my boundaries and that they give me back information about myself.

In this way a person gradually internalises that experience of being attended to by others, and learns more and more to turn that same attention towards themselves. By coming to know themselves better, they build up an image of who they are and mark themselves off from others. And that necessary distance is the basis of self-respect, of respect for our own singularity, and of living alongside other people. The movement runs both ways, since I respect the other's authenticity and pay them attention, while also hoping for the same in return.

Fair treatment and the voice of conscience

As one takes shape as a person, there arises the sense of having a centre of one's own, a worth of one's own and a will of one's own. Taking yourself seriously, heeding what you feel and want, is already a way of treating yourself with fairness. And the more a person belongs to themselves, the more it matters to them that others treat them that way too.

Unfair treatment hurts in a particular way. It hurts not only because of the concrete harm, but because it overlooks what one is and calls into question whether one matters as the singular someone one happens to be. Here, though, we have a decisive resource at our disposal, which is the capacity to feel when something is fair and when it is not. That sense of what is right is what Längle links to moral conscience, and it works like an inner compass telling us whether we are acting well, both towards others and towards ourselves. Thanks to it, we do not depend on anyone else's verdict to know that we have the right to be as we are.

When another person treats me fairly, something important happens. They confirm from outside that sense of rightness I already felt within, and by really seeing me they help me see myself better. That then allows me to take a clear stand, both on my own behalf and on behalf of others. A person is fair to themselves when they feel that they do not pass themselves by, that they have themselves, that they are with themselves and do not betray themselves. In psychological terms, that is exactly what we experience as our own dignity. It means being able to stand by myself and by my decisions, because I made them with awareness.

Appreciation, someone seeing what is worthwhile in you

Someone can treat me fairly without there being any closeness between us at all. A manager can be scrupulously fair with me and still have no idea who I am. This is why the third condition goes further and is far more personal. Appreciation consists in someone valuing something in me, in their seeing what is worthwhile about me and letting me know it.

When that happens, something shifts inside. Another person's appreciation does not stay outside me, it makes me ask how I look at myself. If someone values something in me that I had never noticed, or even despised, that outside gaze invites me to revise my own. And so, between what others appreciate in me and what I come to appreciate myself, the image I hold of who I am takes shape and firms up, and on that basis self-worth is established.

The result is hard to define but easy to recognise when you see it in someone. It is a person who is at one with themselves, who is not playing a part, and who can stand behind who they are without needing to defend or justify themselves. It shows from the outside, and it gives them a natural authority that comes from no post and no title, but simply from being firmly planted in what they are.

What you can do, look attentively

These conditions depend in part on others, but not entirely. Längle points to a personal activity specific to this third motivation, which is looking attentively, letting your gaze rest on yourself, noticing what is your own.

Looking at yourself attentively makes you more personally accessible and encourages genuine encounters with others, which in turn strengthens the conditions of this very motivation. It is a reciprocal movement. The better you know yourself and stand behind yourself, the more available you are for encounter, and the more real the encounter, the more you come to recognise yourself.

When it fails, shame and the loss of oneself

When this motivation goes unmet, a person loses sight of themselves. They stop having access to their genuine way of being and end up feeling like a stranger to themselves, as though they were living beside someone they do not quite know. People in this position often find it very hard to be alone, because they do not know what to do with themselves, they do not know what is properly theirs or what they truly enjoy. A simple way of gauging how much in touch with yourself you are is to spend time alone without reaching for distractions, and notice how comfortable or uncomfortable you feel.

Längle describes several features that tend to appear when someone does not have hold of themselves. There is a suffering under inner emptiness and a great pain that has been repressed. There is also an insatiable dependence on other people, because it is only through their gaze that the person manages to feel seen, loved or admired. And there is a difficulty in keeping boundaries or committing to anything, driven along by an unruly urge to stay “free”.

A case Längle recounts shows this clearly. A woman of forty-six lived alone and without a steady partner, in her words “because that is how I want it”, though in truth she found it very hard to be on her own. During the lockdown of 2020 it became evident to her that she was more alone than she would have wished, and for the first time she was able to acknowledge it. She found it enormously shameful to admit, and she had never said it even to her closest friends.

When the therapist asked her why it shamed her so much, a feeling came to light that she had never shared with anyone. She considered herself so awful that nobody could possibly take an interest in her, and now, shut indoors, she had to put up with herself all day as well. And she went on to say that it was hardly surprising nobody took an interest, and that precisely because she was so pitiful she never spoke about herself, since it would matter to no one and would only be awkward.

She criticised herself relentlessly, ran herself down and could not bear compliments, which immediately brought on intense shame. She could not hold a conversation with herself, and did not even know how such a thing was done. All she knew was running herself down, criticising herself, and hiding away in shame.

Behind all this lay enormous suffering. At bottom it was the mortal fear of the girl she had been, with an alcoholic father and a family secret that was not allowed to come out. She had kept it quiet all her life, always on the alert so that nobody would notice anything. Längle puts it in a way worth holding on to, which is that shame smothered the dialogue with herself and with others. That is why being herself was not possible either, because in order to be yourself you have to be able to look at yourself and speak to yourself. Working on exactly that in therapy brought her a great inner liberation.

Try this. When facing a decision, ask yourself whether this is really you, or whether you are trying to please someone, or an idea you hold of yourself. Setting a small, honest boundary is often a powerful act of self-respect, because saying no to others is also saying yes to yourself.

Try this. The next time someone pays you a compliment, try not to deflect it or play it down, but simply to receive it and notice how it feels. If discomfort comes up, that discomfort is valuable information about the way you treat yourself.

From “I can be myself” to what comes next

This third motivation rests on the two before it and prepares the fourth. When I can be here, when I like living and can also find myself within that life, the conditions are in place for the last question, the question of meaning.

If you notice that you have been playing a part for some time, that you struggle to know what you really want when nobody is watching, or that you treat yourself with a harshness you would never use on someone you love, it is worth returning to this level.

Perhaps you recognise the sense of not quite knowing who you are, the difficulty in setting boundaries, or a self-criticism that gives you no rest. If any of this resonated with you, I want you to know that you do not have to walk that path alone. In my practice I accompany these processes through existentially oriented counselling and therapy and through philosophical consultation, two complementary ways of exploring, calmly and without rushing, the questions that truly matter. I work both in person and through online sessions, so that distance need not be an obstacle. If you would like to take a first step, I would be glad to welcome you.

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If these questions resonate with you, my work in philosophical counseling and existential analysis offers a space for dialogue to think through how you are living and what life you want to build. If you would like to take that step, I invite you to get in touch.

Frequently asked questions

What is the third fundamental motivation? It is the third of the four conditions of a fulfilled existence according to Alfried Längle's Existential Analysis. It concerns our relationship with ourselves, and its question is “I am myself, but can I be so?”. It rests on three conditions, which are respectful attention, fair treatment and appreciation.

How is self-worth built according to Existential Analysis? Out of having been seen, treated fairly and appreciated by others, and out of internalising that treatment until we can give it to ourselves. Other people's appreciation prompts our own appraisal of how we act, and the foundation of self-worth is established through both together.

What role does conscience play in being oneself? The capacity to feel what is fair and unfair is what gives a person the right to be as they are, because they can orient themselves by that feeling which shows them whether they are acting well. When someone treats us fairly, they confirm that inner perception and deepen the relationship we have with ourselves.

Why does shame stop us from being ourselves? Because it smothers the dialogue with oneself and with others. Someone deeply ashamed of what they are tends to hide, does not speak about themselves, cannot bear compliments and knows only self-criticism, so they never come to build a relationship with themselves.

Is setting boundaries selfish? No. According to Längle, being a person requires marking off what is one's own from what belongs to others, since only in that way is justice done to the irreplaceable character of each of us. Without that line there is no self that can enter into genuine relationship with others.

References

This article is based on the work of Alfried Längle, Existenzanalyse und Logotherapie (Existential Analysis and Logotherapy), Stuttgart, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2021, and Lehrbuch zur Existenzanalyse. Grundlagen (Textbook of Existential Analysis. Foundations), Vienna, Facultas, 2013. Längle developed Existential Analysis from the work of Viktor Frankl and is the founder of the International Society for Existential Analysis and Logotherapy (GLE-International). Translations of the passages quoted are my own.