Recently someone accused me of being defensive.

My response went something like this: “Me? Defensive? Who’re you callin’ defensive, yer defensive. Yo mama! Hrumph!”

My critic rejoined that I should read the self-help classic How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I rolled my eyes. From all I had heard about the book, it seemed to be all about remembering and repeating names so that people who loved hearing their own names would like you more.

However, my persistent critic did something that would have made Dale Carnegie proud: He influenced me. How? He said “Come on. When you get to be a world famous writer, don’t you want to know how to deal with all the interviewers?”

The words swept me into my fantasy world, the place my mind flies to on my bad days. Only this time there was a dragon there: the stress of thinking about being publicly interviewed. I imagined an interviewer standing outside the door with a battering ram, so impatient to interrogate me about my astounding imaginary success that he could not even bother knocking. With a sigh of defeat I searched for the Kindle version of the book on Amazon and when I saw that it was less than three dollars, I downloaded it.

During the first few pages, I began to see why the Dale Carnegie book is a classic. I found it hard to argue with many of his points. According to Carnegie, people love compliments (but only sincere ones); if you want something from someone, you are more likely to get it if you look at the situation from their point of view and make your argument appeal to what they want, not what you want, since – he says – people are only interested in themselves.

Carnegie argues that we are all creatures of emotion, not of reason, which means no amount of logic will convince anyone of anything if their self-esteem is threatened. He views society as a game of inflated egos colliding with each other like billiard balls.

Rather than viewing this as a damning critique of society or human nature, Carnegie sees it as an important insight to use in achieving goals, a law of behavior that a smart person will use to his or her advantage.

Carnegie advocates giving people what they want; that is, making them feel important, talking about their interests, looking at everything from their point of view, letting them feel superior to you. What is the payoff for setting your own ego aside? Power. Carnegie never uses the word power, but that is clearly what he means when he says “influence.”

Carnegie says that, if you let the other person “win” the pointless and futile ego battles, you are more likely to get what you want from them, whether your goal is to sell a product, get a child to clean his room, get your rent reduced, or persuade an irate customer to continue doing business with you.

To underscore his point, Carnegie quotes a Chinese sage, Lao-tse: “The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus, they are able to reign over all the mountain streams.”

Carnegie also sets forth scores of anecdotes about company representatives who were able to convert unreasonable clients to their way of thinking by sincerely complimenting them, talking about their interests, listening intensely, and understanding their points of view – techniques Carnegie compares to magic.

It would be easy to object to the book as being manipulative or even Machiavellian – except that Carnegie repeats again and again that compliments and appreciation of others must be genuine. He advises sincerely understanding others and giving them what they want so that everyone walks away from the exchanges happy.

How can I object to everyone being happy? But there is something about the Carnegie system that still bothers me. Is it my childhood emotional baggage, as my critic has suggested? Or something else?

Baggage-wise, when I was a kid, I wanted more than anything to be liked. I wanted to be popular, particularly in the sixth grade, which was the year I was bullied more than I ever have been. Afterward, I concluded that being popular had been a shallow goal anyway; it had led me away from myself. Doing things just to be liked felt dishonest.

I recovered from the bullying by discovering that I loved doing things that had nothing to do with anyone liking me: reading, writing, learning – and even playing video games. When I focused my attention outside myself, I was far happier than when I based my mood on how others saw me.

Any time I hear anyone say, “Do this and you will be popular,” I cringe, yet Carnegie is all about being popular. According to him, the main way to make people like you is to shower them with genuine praise and make them feel important. Though Carnegie says “genuine,” the phrase “make them feel important” unsettles me because it suggests that you are creating a self-serving illusion rather than honestly believing someone is important. He gives many examples to illustrate why the desire to feel important is one of the most fundamental and powerful human drives rivaled only by sex. (Curiously, he does not include eating).

Carnegie even goes so far to say that the main reason great artists and writers like Charles Dickens produced masterpieces is that they wanted to feel important. This unsettled me. Maybe he is partly right; most authors do love praise.

But feeling important seems like such a shallow reason to write books like Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. What about the need to portray life as it actually is? To make sense of the world? To understand people? What about the love of the writing itself? Do the most moving artistic masterpieces ultimately come from the shallow place of needing to feel important?

The question made me analyze my own motives for creativity. While I do enjoy praise for my writing, during the time I am creating stories, I am not thinking about trying to be the best. If I did, my writing would be thin. My writing goes much better when I ask, “What can l learn from this story?”

The creative process is about experimenting with the craft, seeking to understand life, and exploring the power of words. The art comes from a place of experience, memories, images, emotion, and an attempt to reflect life as it actually is.

Something else about Carnegie troubled me. One of my intellectual heroes, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, believed love is an end in itself, whereas Carnegie recommends behavior I associate with love – empathy, compassion, listening, appreciation, and kindness – as a means to an end: to control others without them realizing what you are doing.

The idea of trying to control or “influence” people using praise seems dishonest no matter how you spin it. That being said, if I ever went to the ER with a loved one who was having a heart attack and the triage nurse was not taking it seriously, that would be a good time to know how to “handle” people. Maybe it would help, as Carnegie says, to look at the situation from her point of view and persuade her based on her own concerns – rather than expressing rage or accusing.

Regardless of what I think of Carnegie, he is right about one thing: We often act like our self-images are our lives, and we defend them as if we were fighting for physical survival; when our egos are wounded, the pain is real, yet people do not generally die of bruised pride.

However, it can muddy thoughts. It can make people unwilling to listen to reason. It can make them forget about more important things that are at stake. The drive to defend an ego is also emotionally draining — a fact that any self-respecting internet troll knows. People who are able to remove themselves from the “billiard table” and rise above the petty need to defend their fragile self-esteems are potentially some of the most powerful people in the world.

While I still have major reservations about the Carnegie system, maybe I have been too defensive at times, wasting valuable mental energy to insist that I am right or good when no one really cares.

Maybe I could find more productive uses for my emotional energy. What could I accomplish if I lost the “need” to defend my ego against critics? Maybe I could become an enlightened uber-rationalist who could go directly toward her goals without being led astray by emotional minutia. Maybe I could even turn my attention to helping others achieve their goals. Maybe I could help others see the best in themselves, inspire them, diminish the sum total of human suffering, and make the world a better place.

Or I could make scads of money and wield power over my enemies. Um, no, sorry. That came out wrong. I meant influence them. Yeah, influence.

That is exactly what I meant.

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