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In his work Psychologie de la motivation Paul Diel undertakes a psychological study of the latent motives condensed in the subconscious and the superconscious of the human psyche. The degree and intensity of these motives do, indeed, vary from one person to another. It is the infant who inevitably will inherit, according to his immediate environment, different types of psychological driving forces. Unable to fully comprehend the theoretical explanations of these latent motives, the child, through his intuition, instinctively resorts to accepting them as a part of his personal growth. Diel thus defines thoroughly the psychological method necessary to analyze the phenomena of falsely motivated values, which lead man initially to internal conflict and then to external conflict with others. To better conceptualize the mystery surrounding these conflicts, one must examine in depth the complex nature of developing guilt, and how, by way of suppression, it turns into vanity, the chief source of ill motivation: that is to say, man's inability to rise above banality.
In Diel's view, vanity is nothing more than culpability unrecognized, denied, in short, suppressed. It is an unconscious entrapment, whereby the individual cannot escape so long as he remains unaware of his repressed guilt. In so doing, all he does is reinforce his own vanity (Psychologie de la motivation, p. 312).
While culpability epitomizes excessive low self-esteem, a feeling of inferiority comes from overesteeming others. The imbalance created by these feelings sets off a neurological disorder which becomes intensified with influencing motives from the environment. Not knowing how to esteem others, the individual incessantly belittles their values. This tendency to devalue, accompanied by a sentiment of accusation, gives rise to a feeling of anguish dominated by an excessive tendency towards negativity.
The only way to dissolve vanity, according to Diel, is by liberating suppressed guilt through elucidation, b