Self esteem or self-respect?

I've been reading Theodore Dalrymple on Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder. The book is really a close reading of only one of Christie's books, but rewarding nonetheless. The result is a series of essays reacting to her descriptions of characters and conversations. He finds Christie well ahead of her time. Miss Marple's conversation with a doctor treating young offenders who believes the main thing they lack is self-esteem causes the author, who himself served as a prison doctor for many years, to offer this:

The cult of self-esteem was reminiscent of the facilely optimistic method of Emile Coue in the early part of the twentieth century, according to which someone who was worried about his health had only to repeat "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better" to feel much better. But Coue's method was at least harmless, unless it induced people to disregard symptoms of a dangerous but curable illness, and may even have done some people some good, whereas the cult of self-esteem is pernicious. The quality of self-esteem is but tissue-paper thickness away from that of self-importance. It demands nothing of anybody but an ability to puff out his chest and preen himself mentally if not physically (the latter requiring some discipline), while demanding, as of right, the recognition by others of the exceptional value of his person. It is essentially solipsistic: there need be no objective correlative for its occasion. It is a quality that accords with the psychology of the so-called real me, that inner person of goodness and perfection that subsists when all the dross of the merely apparent me or outer me — the one who is selfish, lazy, coarse, dishonest, cruel, and so forth — is disregarded or stripped away, The beauty of the real me excuses everything in advance, and by doing so increases the quantity of what there is to excuse.

A certain degree of self-confidence is necessary for any kind of achievement, but it ought always to be balanced by a certain degree of self-doubt, like the clown or jester who reminded the emperor that he was mortal, like all humans. And self-esteem must always be contrasted with self-respect. The former is inward-looking and self-regarding, the latter outward-looking and other-regarding. The former requires nothing but an attitude, the latter a discipline. If one compares the mode of dress of each, self-esteem suggests that others must accept me as I am, however scruffy that may be, and not judge by appearances. It gives me license to take the line of least resistance and make no effort, in dress as in everything else. Self-respect, on the other hand, imposes on me the duty to see me as others might see me. It requires me to straighten my tie, which might be uncomfortable, and polish my shoes, which is a bore. This may all go too far, but virtues can always go too far and become vices. Self-respect in dress may descend into dandyism, which comes full circle to self-esteem. Self-respect carried too far may impose an inflexible and tyrannical etiquette, breach of which may induce hasty and cruel adverse judgment of others. But if you walk in the street of almost any city in the Western world, you will see how far we are from self-respect carried too far, and how near to universal self-esteem we are, carelessness of dress being almost de rigueur. Here I am, everyone seems to be saying, you must accept me as I am. There is a certain hypocrisy in this equality of carelessness, however: it disguises the fact that no one wants to be equal in all other ways, for example, in the amount of money that he has.

Theodore Dalrymple, Agatha Christie and the Metaphysics of Murder, Criterion Books, 2026, Chapter XIII, pp. 123-124.