So much of what passes for psychology is a sort of chemistry of the mind, a pre-modern chemistry steeped in recipes and potions. What is needed is a physics of the mind, a few basic laws from which all of chemistry can be derived. The need for validation, for example, belongs to chemistry, being-for-the-other to physics. At some level the former is a choice, a contingent formation that seeks to resolve the latter which is necessary or ontological. It is not the only way that a resolution can be aimed at, but all attempted resolutions bear a family resemblance. The self is a structure mediating being for the other by reflexively internalising as much otherness as it can. As such it is a fiction and remains fragile no matter how well-consolidated. If its fictionality is revealed then it shatters and you experience pure being-for-the-other, which is felt as suffering. What you see is that you can't recuperate it by any appeal to consciousness. It's not that there is a problem of other minds, it's that others exist to shatter the mythology of own mind. What you take to be your mind is no mind. There really is nowhere to stand, can you stand in that?