The Shrink
If you were to pay attention to every available self-help book and therapy workshop, you would be justified in concluding that we are experiencing a plague of self-criticism. Here are just some of the titles I’ve recently come across: Embracing your Inner Critic, Master your Inner Critic, Self-therapy for your Inner Critic, Beyond the Inner Critic, Coping with Your Inner Critic, Disarming your Inner Critic.
At the same time, data from social psychology studies suggest that many of us are deluded and not nearly self-critical enough. For instance, we overemphasise other people’s responsibility for their behaviour, ignoring the extenuating power of circumstances. But when it comes to explaining our own actions we tend to take too much personal credit for our successes and blame external factors for our failures. Most of us believe that we have above-average abilities (a statistical impossibility). It seems that the majority of people suffer from at least some form of self-serving bias.
How can we be so self-critical and yet so gullible? Perhaps the explanation is that we oscillate between two different types of self-criticism, failing to distinguish properly between them. One type is hostility towards oneself, the opposite of which is kindness to self; another kind is an unflinching objectivity about who we are, the opposite of which is self-delusion.
The two are quite separate: it is after all possible to be extremely harsh towards oneself while not being at all objective in one’s appraisals, and, conversely, very objective and not at all harsh. Self-criticism in the hostile sense is not conducive to self-improvement. A self-flagellating inner homunculus is not going to help anybody become a better person. Instead our aim should be a marriage of objectivity and self-compassion.
A useful distinction in this respect is offered by psychologist Paul Gilbert: compassionate self-correction is a desire to improve, while shame-based self-attacking is a desire to punish. We should listen to our inner critic only if we have nurtured a kindly and rational inner voice.
The Sage
Philosophy is often accused of being excessively rational, dismissing emotion as irrelevant at best and a harmful distraction at worst. Such charges usually put me on the defensive, but when it comes to self-criticism, philosophy’s alleged vice turns out to be its greatest virtue.
Most of us want to believe what is true rather than what is false. We want to have an accurate picture of the world, not one distorted by wishful thinking, ignorance or prejudice. Yet, if we are honest, most of our beliefs are based on scanty information, hearsay or received opinion. Of course they are: life is literally too short to examine rigorously the bases of all our beliefs.
So if we really want our beliefs to be sound, we have to be alert to the ways in which they might be false. We have to nurture an acute inner critic, one which is able to detect evidence that contradicts what we currently think. This is what the discipline of philosophy fosters above all else.
This critic works best, however, when it is as impersonal and emotion-free as possible. The more people identify a belief as their own, the less willing they are to consider objectively any evidence that contradicts it. It no longer becomes a simple question of whether something is true or false, it becomes about your willingness to give up something of which you feel ownership.
Similarly, if you think too much about whether you are a good or a bad person, it can become harder to consider whether an action is the right or wrong thing to do. Changing our minds may imply judging our past actions harshly, which can easily lead to defence mechanisms kicking in to try to convince us we were right all along.
That’s why the best philosophical inner critic is neither nice nor nasty, neither gentle nor harsh. In fact, it’s a critic that has nothing to do with you as a person at all. It’s all about the beliefs. If that sounds coldly objective, that’s because it is, and all the better for it.
The Shrink & The Sage live together in south-west England
