If you try to classify and systematize the letters sent to the Psythea ru website, you will find that the authors of more than 80% of them can be classified into the category “I myself am happy to be deceived.” Life’s problems, and very serious, difficult and painful ones, are rooted not in someone’s machinations, not in a combination of life circumstances, but... in a person’s tendency to self-deception.
Self-deception
that is, “deceiving oneself” is most often an unconscious desire to wishful thinking, as well as a refusal to perceive reality as it is. Sometimes self-deception is completely conscious - in this case it is an even more amazing phenomenon - in fact, dreams, dreams, fantasies that replace real life.
Random (situational) self-deception is an excellent means of self-defense from negative emotions. But it often happens that self-deception gets out of control and becomes a strategy of life and behavior.
Interestingly, psychologists rarely use the term “self-deception”, preferring to replace it with the more scientific equivalents of “denial”, “repression”, “illusory thinking”. The latter is especially common; moreover, sometimes it seems that illusory thinking is about to take on the character of an epidemic.
There are many examples of self-deception.
For example, the mistress of a married man, confident that her lover and his wife have nothing, he stays with her for the sake of the children, and will soon leave the family completely. Or a woman suffering domestic violence, confident that there is no way out, etc.
What is the reason for such self-deception? Why do people lie to themselves and believe these lies? Why do they, in fact, rob themselves, protecting themselves from reality and ultimately causing themselves much more serious suffering?
There are many reasons for this.
The versatility of the concept
The term “self-deception” is widely used in a number of humanities disciplines, namely in psychology and psychoanalysis, literature, philosophy, epistemology, sociology, etc. Depending on the context of each area, its interpretations vary.
Self-deception in psychoanalysis
In clinical practice, instead of the term “self-deception”, as a rule, its closest equivalents are used: “repression” and “illusory thinking”.
In his work “A New Language for Psychoanalysis” (1967), the famous American psychoanalyst and psychotherapist Roy Schaefer describes the patient’s habit of deceiving himself as a way of “unconscious protection” from unpleasant or shame-inducing experiences (discoveries).
Self-deception in literature and philosophy
The phenomenon of self-deception is reflected in the writings of a number of existentialist philosophers, the most prominent of which are Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Sartre. In the works of the latter, self-deception (“bad faith”) occupies a central place and is interpreted as the main form of inauthentic existence.
From the context of Sartre’s writings it follows that a necessary condition for self-deception is the so-called “division” of a person’s essence into two parts (“I” and “consciousness”), one of them hides from the other something known only to it. According to Sartre's theory, the paradoxes that are associated with the phenomenon of “bad faith” are explained by the fact that the act of deception is committed within the framework of a single, solitary consciousness.
Exploring the concept of self-deception, Sartre revises the views of his teacher Husserl, who identified the concepts of “I” and “consciousness,” and as a result forms his own theory, which formed the basis of his essay “Being and Nothingness” (1943).
Self-deception as interpreted by Robert Trivers
American evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers[1] attaches the utmost importance to self-deception in human and even animal behavior. According to his theory, a person deceives himself so that, having convinced himself of the truth of initially false information, he is more likely to convince others of its truth.
This interpretation is based on the following logic: being in nature a basic aspect of interspecies communication, lies (including those supported by self-deception) provide the opportunity to obtain benefits; Thus, animals in the wild lie through mimicry or by producing “alarm signals” that promote survival.
The very first and most important reason is IGNORANCE
Lack of knowledge or simple lack of education, attachment to the old (conformism), stereotypical thinking and does not allow to perceive and assimilate any new information. Although at the same time a person may have high self-confidence and even pride, the state of “I know better than the other.” Ignorance can completely deprive a person of critical thinking.
Suffering, the ignorant person will be the last to admit his self-deception and take responsibility for his misfortunes. He will not allow himself to be helped either - all because of the same inability to perceive anything other than firmly ingrained stereotypes.
Another common cause of self-deception is mental weakness.
A person can feel, and even clearly know and understand that he lives, acts, decides incorrectly, not as he should, but cannot find the strength to accept reality. The main motive for self-deception is fear. It is fear that gives rise to indecision, lack of will, and even disrespect for oneself. Unable to lead himself in the world and the world around him, a weak person finds a way out in adapting to circumstances, or even in avoiding them (hiding).
This form of self-deception is especially vividly illustrated by all kinds of addictions (drug addiction, gaming addiction, etc.). It is noteworthy that, unlike the first case, having an understanding and awareness of reality, a person sees his “fall” and begins to experience feelings of guilt and shame, which ultimately worsens the situation.
The opposite reason for the tendency to self-deception is inadequately inflated self-esteem (pride, vanity, etc.) A certain “greatness” that does not allow a person to “descend” to reality. Such a person may not understand, not accept, NOT NOTICE the most obvious things.
Most often, such people do not receive the desired recognition - simply because they do not actually live up to their self-image. And in order to maintain their own unstable self-esteem, such people are forced to assert themselves at the expense of others. Such a person may sincerely consider himself a victim, exaggerating his own misfortunes, and not recognizing the achievements of other people. Tendencies to envy, rancor, excessive touchiness, etc.
This list can be continued endlessly, because... There are many options for self-deception , but they all indicate that a person, for one reason or another, is not aware of himself and reality, and, therefore, does not have opportunities for personal growth and development.
Question: how to break out of the captivity of self-deception? We will begin to deal with this difficult psychological condition in the next article.
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The Nature of Self-Deception
The human psyche is structured in such a way that people constantly deceive themselves, look for excuses for their mistakes and any negative manifestations that primarily harm themselves. What is the matter, why is it so difficult for us to see the real picture, why does the beam in our own eye seem invisible? Yes, everything here is very simple, our natural adaptation is configured in such a way that we, firstly, have a sufficiently high self-esteem that allows us to achieve significant results in life, and secondly, if we are not to blame, then someone else is to blame, and therefore correct the situation is necessary for another person, and this is a desire to suppress and subjugate. It may seem that I have confused and complicated everything too much, but this is how things really are, there is no point in engaging in self-deception unless you look at it more deeply. It’s clear that for productivity it is important to be realistic and have realistic self-esteem, so what excuses can there be for your failures when you need to go to the result? But here, of course, it all comes down to the ideal balance within us, if we knew how to achieve it, we would probably be gods, but it turns out that to some extent self-deception is useful, since it has to do with self-esteem, which should not be below the plinth , there is no point in constantly reproaching yourself and considering yourself a failure.
However, the senseless justification of all your failures in your own eyes leads to the repetition of the same mistakes. Here the stage of growing up develops in a person, because the older and wiser we become, the less sense we see in self-deception, because with age our EGO becomes more resistant to self-criticism and does not have a negative impact on self-esteem. In principle, if you approach life from the point of view of constant calculations, then there will be no point in all these overestimated or underestimated self-esteem at all; in this case, a person becomes something like a cyborg, he simply calculates and calculates the combinations that will lead him to the desired goal . All this again comes with age, of course, if a person develops and his psyche is in perfect order. If development ends at the teenage stage, then nothing wise can be expected from such a person, and after a certain age stage, these people slowly become senile. But this is a completely different topic, indirectly intertwined with this one, where self-deception still takes place in the overwhelming majority of cases. Well, no matter how much you analyze its nature, it is clear that in most cases, self-deception is a negative manifestation, which, firstly, does not allow you to grow properly, admitting your mistakes, learning from them and preventing their reappearance. Well, secondly, this is simply an inadequate reaction to your own actions, and therefore all your actions will be far from perfect.
Thus, it turns out that it is easier to develop sufficient self-discipline in yourself, to have a boss and a subordinate in one person, than to bring your self-deception to a conscious level, dismantling its entire nature to the very first root, as written above. Self-deception, with its influence on our self-esteem, is designed primarily to search for the source of your problems outside of yourself, but this is too expensive, and not everyone is strong enough to subjugate external resources, but skillful adjustment to reality can solve many problems. That is, simply put, only a powerful person, independent of external factors, can afford to have excessively high self-esteem, and therefore self-deception, in which he will always be right and never make mistakes, and even then, hungry jackals are just waiting for their victim to commit an error sufficient to break it. Therefore, of course, you need to keep a balance between self-deception and the self-esteem that you have thanks to it, and self-discipline, in which you demand objectivity and effectiveness from yourself.
In general, from my observations, I can say that a person who is not mentally suppressed in childhood, in principle, does not need much self-deception; there is no point in compensating for a lack of self-confidence in such a way as to consider oneself the limit of perfection; no one can convince you otherwise. Therefore, it is so important to raise children in such a way that they feel confident enough, not an ideal, they must strive for it, but in no case worse than others, no one at all. There is no need to make any comparisons, especially for the worse, the child either wins or temporarily does not do so, but does not lose in the sense that this is a complete disaster, otherwise then only self-deception will compensate for all those mental traumas in which self-confidence suffers . This, too, all has to do with the roots of self-deception, that is, with its origins and meaning, because all the secrets of the human psyche are hidden in his personal interests, based on his basic survival instinct.
