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The Western, Buddhist, and Upanishadic Answers to the Problem of the Self

Man looking in the mirro

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Your body and mind have changed enormously in the course of your life, and will continue to change. Yet, convention has you, from the baby to the retiree, as the same person.

But let’s not be so conventional. Let’s take the time to ask: what is a ‘person’, and what would it take for a person no longer to be that same person? Are you the same, identical person at all times? Are you the same person that you were a minute, a day, a year, ten years ago? If so, what is the abiding factor?

The English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) famously defined a person as ‘a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.’ According to this definition, you are a person because you can think about yourself in the past, future, and conditional, and in a variety of different places: ‘Last month I could have won the lottery, if only I had bought a ticket.’ 

This may tell us what it takes to be a person, but it does not tell us what constitutes the person—or what it is that makes you this self-conscious mental being. Is it your body, your brain, your ‘soul’?

Three Thought Experiments

Imagine, God forbid, that you have a serious accident that leaves you lying brain-dead on a hospital bed. Your body is being kept functioning, but you are no longer self-conscious nor can you ever be again. Are you, in that permanent brain-dead state, still a person? If not, then your physical body cannot be that which makes you a person. And if it is not your physical body, the obvious candidate is your brain or mind.

Some philosophers have argued that you remain the same person because your body or brain remains the same body or brain, in the sense that it is spatiotemporally continuous (continuous in space and time). Others have argued that you remain the same person because you are psychologically continuous, that is, because your later mental states derive or descend from your earlier mental states.

To help decide this problem, the American philosopher Sydney Shoemaker (1931-2022) asked us to imagine that science has advanced to such an extent that brain transplants are now possible. On the same morning, two men, Mr. Brown and Mr. Robinson, each have their brain removed and operated upon. However, a poorly trained assistant inadvertently puts Brown’s brain into Robinson’s head, and Robinson’s brain into Brown’s head. One of these men dies, but the other—say the one with Brown’s brain and Robinson’s body (let’s call him ‘Brownson’)—eventually regains consciousness. When asked his name he replies, ‘Brown.’ Subsequently, he is able to recognise Brown’s wife and family and to relate Brown’s childhood memories, but he cannot recognise Robinson’s wife and family nor relate Robinson’s childhood memories.

Who then is this man Brownson with Brown’s brain and Robinson’s body? If he is Brown, as most people would argue, this would confirm our earlier intuition that a person cannot be reduced to a body. This leaves us with two possibilities: Either Brownson is Brown because he has Brown’s brain, or he is Brown because he is psychologically continuous with Brown.

To decide between these two possibilities, let us push our thought experiment further still. As people can survive with extensive damage to one cerebral hemisphere, let us imagine that Brownson’s brain (or indeed anyone’s brain, say Smith’s) is divided into two hemispheres and that each hemisphere is transplanted into a brainless body. After the operation, two people awake who are both psychologically continuous with Smith, and who have the same character and memories as Smith.

Although both people are psychologically continuous with Smith, they cannot both be Smith—or, by the transitivity of identity, they would also be each other! Moreover, from the moment they awake, their lives and experiences will begin to diverge.

Our attempt to decide between brain and psychological continuity as the seat of personal identity has landed us in an even deeper difficulty: whereas both brain and psychological continuity seem capable of division, personal identity is not.

Parfit and the Pearl of Self

In considering this kind of ‘fission’ thought experiment, the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit (1942-2017) argued that personal identity may not be what matters.

Because neither of the two people who acquired one of Smith’s brain hemispheres is Smith, Smith cannot be said to have survived the fission of his brain. Yet, everything that matters about Smith—his memories, character, intentions, relations—has survived in both of the transplantees. And it would be absurd to destroy one of the transplantees simply so that we could preserve numerical identity and claim that Smith had survived.

For Parfit, there is no further fact about personal identity, no ‘pearl of self’ that passes intact from one moment, or body, to the next. What matters is not identity but continuity.

This sounds radical. But to me, who has written on Indian philosophy, it rings a bell—or even two.

The Buddhist Take

More than two thousand years before Locke, Shoemaker, and Parfit, the Buddha had argued that what we take to be the self is composed of five elements (skandhas), namely, body, sensation, perception, will, and consciousness. The five skandhas are in a constant state of flux but together create the illusion of integrity and continuity, that is, the illusion of the self.

This explains why, when I try to become aware of myself, I can only ever become aware of such and such perception, such and such sensation, or such and such thought, but never of any actual, core self.

The death of the bodily self leads to the disaggregation of the skandhas and to their re-aggregation into another not-self, which is neither identical to nor entirely different from the previous one, but forms part of a causal continuum with it. An analogy that is often offered to describe this process of rebirth is that of a flame, fuelled by desire, passing from one candle to the next.

The cycle of rebirth can only be broken by transcending our subjective and distorted image of the world, which is built around the ‘I am’ conceit. This, then, is nibbana, or, in Sanskrit rather than Pali, nirvana.

Nirvana, as I see it, rests on the understanding that consciousness is a sequence of conscious moments rather than the continuous, unbroken consciousness of the ‘I am’ conceit. This understanding, so long as it can be maintained, amounts to freedom from the self.

The Upanishadic Take

While Parfit and the Buddha have much in common, the Upanishadic tradition adopts a different approach.

When I look for my self, I find my body, sensation, perception, and so on. The Buddhist concludes that, since none of these is permanent, there can be no permanent self. But the Upanishadic sage might ask: who, or what, is aware of all these things?

The answer of the Upanishads is the Atman, or true Self: not the skandhas, which wax and wane, but the consciousness that is aware of them. Just like the eye cannot see itself, though it sees all else, so this ‘witness consciousness’ cannot observe itself. But through every change, it is the one constant.

Whereas the Buddhist concludes that there is no enduring self, the Upanishadic sage concludes that we have been looking for it in the wrong place. The self is not something that we experience, but that by which we experience. It is not an actor on the stage, but the prince watching from behind the curtain.

Two birds sitting in a tree
The jiva and Atman, sitting in a tree

East and West

We began by asking what, from baby to retiree, makes you the same person. The body could not provide the answer, while brain and psychological continuity proved capable of division. Parfit’s solution was to question the question: beyond continuity, there is no further fact of personal identity.

The Buddhist arrives, by a very different route, at essentially the same conclusion. What we call the self is a succession of changing states and processes, held together by causal continuity and the ‘I am’ conceit. Liberation lies not in finding the self, but in freeing ourselves from it. To ‘know yourself’ is, paradoxically, to know that there is no self to know.

The Upanishadic sage, though acutely aware of the problem, succeeds in salvaging the abiding self. No abiding self can be found among the changeable contents of consciousness, because the true Self is not one of those contents, and not changeable.

All three traditions have noticed that the self cannot be found among the contents of experience. From this, the Western tradition and Buddhism conclude that there is no self. The Hindu tradition preserves the self by distinguishing between the personal self, or jiva, and the universal Self, or Atman. Where the jiva is attached, ever-changing, and mortal, the Atman is detached, steadfast, and immortal, and of a kind with God, or Brahman. The precise relationship between Atman and Brahman is a major theme, and dividing line, in Hindu philosophy.

In the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the jiva and Atman are compared to two inseparable birds sitting in a tree (the body). One bird, the jiva, gorges on the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree, while the other bird, tasting of neither, calmly looks on.

We can never catch the second bird, because it is the one that is looking. And so it remains forever elusive. But if the Upanishadic vision is correct, to know that bird is to know both ourselves and God, and, as in Buddhism, to transcend the distinction between self and other.

In the West, we tend to look upon the personal self as a problem to be solved; in India, as the key to salvation.

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But You Mustn’t Be

Orpheus and Eurydice, by Edward Poynter
Orpheus and Eurydice seeking to flee the Underworld.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

In 1970, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published a short paper entitled Death, in which he asked: If death is the permanent end of our existence, is it an evil?

There are, at least to the non-believer, only two possible answers to this question: either death is an evil because it deprives us of life, or it is a mere blank because there is no one left to suffer this deprivation.

Thus, if death is an evil, this is not in virtue of any unpleasant attribute that it has (such as eternal torment), but only in virtue of what it deprives us of, namely, life. For Nagel, the bare experience of life is intrinsically valuable, regardless of the balance of its good and bad elements.

The longer we live, the more we ‘accumulate’ life. In contrast, death cannot be accumulated—it is not, as Nagel puts it, ‘an evil of which Shakespeare has so far received a larger portion than Proust’. Most people would not regard the infinitely long period before they were born, or the temporary suspension of life, as an evil. Therefore, if death is an evil, this is not because it involves a more or less lengthy period of non-existence, but because it deprives us of life.

Nagel’s Straw Men

Nagel raises three objections to this view, but only so as to later overturn them:

  • It is doubtful whether anything can be an evil unless it causes pain or displeasure.
  • In the case of death, there is no subject left to suffer an evil. So long as we live, we have not yet died; and as soon as we are dead, we are no longer alive. So there seems to be no time at which the evil of death might occur. (This is a formulation of the ancient ‘no subject of harm’ argument.)
  • If we do not regard the infinitely long period before we were born as an evil, then why should we regard the period after we are dead any differently? (This is a formulation of the ancient ‘symmetry’ argument.)

All three of these ‘objections’—really, arguments for why we should not fear death—were made already by Epicurus (d. 270 BCE). Nagel addresses them in toto by arguing that the good or evil that befalls us depends on our history and possibilities rather than our momentary state, such that an evil can befall us even if we are no longer here to experience it. For instance, if an intelligent person suffers a brain injury that reduces his mental condition to that of a contented infant, this should be regarded as a serious evil even if the person himself (in his current state) is oblivious to his fate.

In essence, if the three objections are invalid, it is because they ignore the direction of time—that is, the shape of a human life. Even though we do not materially survive our death, we can still suffer evil; and even though we do not exist in the time before our birth and in the time after our death, the time after our death is time of which we have been deprived, time in which we could have continued to enjoy the good of living.

The Problem for Nagel

The question remains as to whether the non-realisation of further life is an absolute evil or whether this depends on what can naturally be hoped for: the death of John Keats at 24 is commonly regarded as tragic, but that of Leo Tolstoy at 82 is not (even though Tolstoy died in a freezing cold train station while running away from his wife). ‘The trouble,’ says Nagel, ‘is that life familiarises us with the goods of which death deprives us … Death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive goods.’

Notice that, although Nagel’s conclusion is impeccably arrived at, it rests on an initial assumption which the casual reader may have taken for granted, namely, that ‘the bare experience of life is intrinsically valuable, regardless of the balance of its good and bad elements’. We might agree or disagree, but Nagel has not proved this. Perhaps it is too fundamental to require proof—or to be provable.

Bernard Williams and the Shape of a Human Life

Three years later (1973), the philosopher Bernard Williams took up the problem where Nagel had left off. If life is intrinsically valuable, does it follow that more is always better? Williams concluded, apparently contra Nagel, that immortality would not be desirable. What gives us reason to go on living, he argued, is not bare existence, but our desires, attachments, and projects—which must necessarily assume the shape of a human life.

Death Kills Us Twice

Fascinating as this may be, my topic here is the fear of death, not the desirability of immortality—which I discuss in another essay. If we grant Nagel his premise, death is an evil insofar as it deprives us of indefinitely extensive goods.

No surprise, given the sheer horror of this conclusion, that theologians down the ages have sought to blunt it. But it gets worse, much worse. Death not only deprives us of life, but also compels us to spend the very life that it deprives us of in the mostly unconscious fear of this deprivation. As I have argued, much of our anxiety and the baggage that comes with it stems from our fear of death. Thus, death not only cuts us short, but prevents us from making the most of whatever it leaves us.

If death is an evil, it is not only because it deprives us of life, but also because it mars whatever little life we do have. While we may be able to postpone death by a few years, there is nothing we can do to avoid it. In the words of Epicurus, ‘It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.’ All that we can do is to come to terms with death in the hope of preventing it from preventing us from making the most of our lives.

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A Psychiatrist’s Three-Step Test for Self-Deception

Woman looking into mirror.
Can you trust what you see?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Some time after the publication of Hide and Seek, I received a letter from a reader, asking:

Are common, ordinary things like seeing the bright side, a silver lining, or an opportunity in misfortune just feeble rationalisations to help us live in a comfortable illusion? Your example about ‘sweet lemons’, a rejected love interest explained away as a blessing in disguise doesn’t feel to me as an illusory or self-deceptive belief. If a cancer patient is glad that they can respect life more fully after getting sick, surely they’re not just dwelling in self-deception and rationalising away things, clinging to some mistaken belief.

Could you clear things up a little about the murky world of self-deception? It’s true that someone rejected for a job opening might say that they’re ‘keeping doors open’, that they got ‘life experience’ or that setbacks are a part of life, and this would allow them to feel better, but I’ve never considered this to be some sort of self-deception.

I replied: 

That’s a very good question. How do we know when we’re deceiving ourselves, rather than learning or growing from our experiences, or just making the best out of a bad situation? By its very nature, self-deception is hard to distinguish from the truth—whether our internal, emotional truth, or the external, objective truth.

That a belief comforts us does not make it false; that it pains us does not make it true. What matters is whether we arrived at the belief because it fits the facts, or because we need the facts to fit the belief.

To establish the direction of fit between your beliefs and the world, here are three tests you can apply.

1. Feel It

First, trust your intuition, and ask yourself: ‘What does it feel like to react in the way that I’m reacting?’ Does it feel calm, considered, and nuanced, or shallow and knee-jerk? Am I taking the welfare of others into consideration, or is it just all about me? Am I satisfied with, even proud of, my self-conquering effort, or am I left feeling small, anxious, and a little ashamed?

2. Test It

Try to falsify the belief—that is, to prove yourself wrong. Self-deception doesn’t ‘add up’ in the grand scheme and can often be brought down by even superficial questioning. As with a jigsaw, try to look at the bigger picture of your life and see how the belief or reaction might fit in. Did you react from a position of strength or vulnerability? What would the person you most respect think? What would Socrates think? Ask others for their opinion. If they challenge or disagree with you, does that make you feel angry, upset, or defensive? The nature of your reaction and its congruity can speak volumes about the character of your motives.

3. Project It

Finally, project the belief into the future and consider where it is likely to lead. Truth is constructive and adaptive, whereas lies are destructive or self-defeating. So how useful is the thought or reaction going to be for you? Are you just covering up an irrational fear to get by, or creating a solid foundation for the future? Are you empowering yourself to fulfil your highest potential, or depriving yourself of opportunities for growth and creating further problems down the line?

Is the cycle simply going to repeat itself, or will the truth, at last, make you free?

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The Psychology and Philosophy of Scapegoating

The Scapegoat, by William Holman Hunt (1854).
The Scapegoat, by William Holman Hunt (1854).

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

The ego defence of displacement plays an important part in scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy, guilt, shame, and insecurity are displaced or redirected onto another, often more vulnerable, person or group.

The scapegoats—often outsiders, immigrants, minorities, ‘deviants’, or other vulnerable groups—are then persecuted, enabling the scapegoaters to discharge and distract from their uncomfortable feelings, which are replaced or overtaken by a crude but consoling sense of affirmation and self-righteous indignation. The creation of a villain necessarily implies that of a hero, even if both are purely fictional.

Sometimes it is the villain, or villains, who are in need of an even greater villain. Especially in a time of crisis, unscrupulous leaders and politicians can cynically exploit the ancient and deep-rooted impulse to scapegoat to deflect and distract from their own inadequacies and evade, or seek to evade, their burden of blame and responsibility.

The Ideal Scapegoat

An ideal scapegoat, whether a person or group, is sufficiently different to be blamed, sufficiently conspicuous to be noticed, and sufficiently vulnerable to be attacked.

A historical example of a scapegoat is Marie Antoinette, queen of Louis XVI of France, whom the people called l’Autre-chienne—a pun playing on Autrichienne [Austrian woman] and autre chienne [other bitch]—and accused of being profligate and promiscuous. When the 14-year-old Marie Antoinette arrived in France to marry the then heir to the throne, the country had already been near-bankrupted by the reckless spending of Louis XV, and the naïve foreign princess soon became the unwitting target of the people’s mounting ire.

A scapegoat, such as Marie Antoinette, need not be entirely innocent. Indeed, some impression of guilt may make for a better scapegoat, providing a hook on which to hang greater grievances.

A scapegoat is often a person or group, but can also be an object, animal, or spirit. In fact, even human scapegoats are no longer regarded as fully human but are to varying degrees dehumanised and objectified. Some, such as witches and midwives in mediaeval Europe, are quite literally demonised. The dehumanisation of the scapegoat—which might, in the process, be transformed into a sacred or ritual object—makes the scapegoating both more potent and more palatable, and can even lend it a sense of pre-ordained, cosmic inevitability.

The Madness of the Crowds

According to the philosopher René Girard (d. 2015), owing to our crooked nature, envy gradually builds up in a society until it reaches a tipping point, at which order and reason cede to mob rule, chaos, and violence. To quell this ‘madness of the crowds’ which poses an existential threat to the society, an exposed or vulnerable person or group is singled out as a sink for all the bad feeling, and the bad feeling bred from the bad feeling. The scapegoat does not merely absorb aggression, but unites the aggressors and reduces their diffuse problems to a single, visible face.

After the defeat of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens in 403 BCE, Socrates, with his close links to prominent oligarchs such as Critias, who had been the first and worst among the Thirty, no longer seemed like the harmless eccentric of old, but like a dangerous and corrupting influence, a breeder of tyrants and the enemy of the common man. In the febrile atmosphere that had taken hold over the city, any accusation made against him, however false or fanciful, could be seized upon as a pretext to punish him and scapegoat him for the sufferings of the tyranny. The trial and death of Socrates, as related in Plato’s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, still makes for compelling reading.

Once he is no more, a scapegoat may be totemised—and all the more so if he is also a martyr, that is, one who opposes or resists a belief or system of beliefs that is being imposed upon him. Today, Socrates is chiefly remembered by his death, with the Stoic Seneca going so far as to opine that ‘it was the hemlock that made Socrates great’ (cicuta magnum Socratem fecit). Socrates himself seems to have anticipated his totemisation, which is one reason he accepted the death sentence even though he could have avoided it, or later escaped. In Plato’s Apology, he seems almost to court death.

The Ultimate Scapegoat

The term ‘scapegoat’ is rooted in the Old Testament, more specifically, in Chapter 16 of the Book of Leviticus, according to which God instructed Moses and Aaron to sacrifice two goats every year. The first goat was to be sacrificed and its blood sprinkled upon the Ark of the Covenant. The High Priest was then to lay his hands upon the head of the second goat and confess the sins of the people. Unlike the first goat, this second goat was not to be killed but released into the wilderness together with its burden of sin, which is why it came to be known as a, or the, scapegoat.

The altar that stands in the sanctuary of every church is a symbolic remnant and reminder of this sacrificial practice, with the ultimate object of sacrifice being, of course, Jesus himself. Upon seeing Jesus for the first time, John the Baptist is said to have exclaimed, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!’ (John 1:29). In Christian iconography, Christ is often depicted as the victorious Lamb of God of the Book of Revelation, with one leg hooked around a banner with a red cross—whence the name of one of Oxford’s most famous public houses, the Lamb & Flag.

The sacrifice prescribed in the Book of Leviticus prefigures that of Jesus, who played the role of the first goat in his human crucifixion, and the role of the second goat, the scapegoat, in his divine resurrection.

Scapegoating is so ingrained in our nature that we scapegoated God himself.

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The Psychology of Self-Deception

Narcissus, by Caravaggio.
Narcissus meets himself. Or does he?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

How well do you know yourself? Probably not as well as you think. Much of what we believe about ourselves is shaped by psychological processes whose very purpose is to prevent us from knowing ourselves. These processes are known as ego defences.

In psychoanalytic theory, ego defences are unconscious processes that we deploy to diffuse the fear and anxiety that arise when who we think we are or who we think we should be (our conscious ‘superego’) comes into conflict with who we really are (our unconscious ‘id’).

For instance, at an unconscious level a man may find himself physically attracted to another man, but at a conscious level he may find this attraction flatly unacceptable. To diffuse the anxiety or tension that arises from this conflict, he may deploy one or more ego defences.

For example, (1) he might refuse to admit to himself that he is attracted to a man. Or (2) he might superficially adopt attitudes and behaviours that are diametrically opposed to those of a stereotypical homosexual, such as going out for several pints with the lads, banging his fists on the counter, and peppering his speech with loud profanities. Or (3) he might transfer his attraction onto someone else and then berate him for being gay.

In each case, he has used a common ego defence, respectively, (1) repression, (2) reaction formation, and (3) projection. Let’s go through each of these in turn.

Repression and Denial

Repression can be thought of as ‘motivated forgetting’: the active, albeit unconscious, ‘forgetting’ of unacceptable drives, emotions, and ideas. Repression is readily confused with denial, which is the refusal to admit to uncomfortable aspects of reality. But whereas repression relates to mental stimuli, denial relates to external stimuli, to things that are ‘out there’. For example, if my partner is cheating on me, I can fail to recognise this (denial), or initially recognise it but then keep it right out of my mind (repression).

Distortion

Repression can also be confused with distortion, which is the reshaping of reality to suit one’s inner needs. For instance, a person who has been beaten black and blue by his father no longer recalls these traumatic events (repression), and instead sees his father as a gentle and loving man (distortion). In this example, there is a clear sense of the distortion building upon the repression, and at the same time buttressing it. Like this, ego defences often build upon one another—into something resembling Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Reaction Formation

Reaction formation is the superficial adoption—and, often, exaggeration—of emotions and impulses that are diametrically opposed to one’s own. A possible high-profile case of reaction formation is that of a certain US congressman, who, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, introduced legislation to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. The congressman resigned when it later emerged that he had been sending sexually explicit messages to a teenage boy. Other, classic, examples of reaction formation include the covert alcoholic who extols the virtues of abstinence, and the privileged student who attends and even organises anti-capitalist rallies.

Projection

Projection involves the attribution of one’s own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and impulses to others. Like distortion, projection involves repression as a first step, since unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and impulses need to be repudiated before they can be re-assigned. Classic examples of projection include the envious person who believes that everyone envies them, the person with fantasies of infidelity who is convinced that their partner is cheating on them, and the covetous person who lives in constant fear of being dispossessed.

Splitting

Just as common is splitting, which involves the division or polarisation of beliefs and people into good and bad by perceiving only their positive or negative attributes. This is often seen in politics, for instance, when left-wingers caricature right-wingers as selfish and narrow-minded, and right-wingers left-wingers as hypocritical and irresponsible—or ‘deplorables’ and ‘elites’, ‘snowflakes’ and ‘rednecks’. Other classic examples of splitting are the religious zealot who divides people into blessed and damned, and the child of divorcees who idolises one parent while blocking out the other. Splitting diffuses the anxiety that arises from our inability to grasp a complex and nuanced state of affairs by simplifying and schematising it and making it easier to process.

Idealisation

Similar to splitting is the ego defence of idealisation. Like the positive end of splitting, idealisation involves overestimating the positive attributes of a person, object, or idea, while skirting over its negative attributes. More fundamentally, it involves the projection of our needs and desires onto that person, object, or idea.

A paradigm of idealisation is infatuation, when love is confused with the need to love, and the idealised person’s negative traits are glossed over or even recast into a positive light. Although this can make for a rude awakening, there are few better ways of relieving our existential anxiety than by manufacturing something that is ‘perfect’ for us, be it a piece of equipment, a place, country, person, or god.

Intellectualisation

If in love with someone unavailable or unattainable, it may be more convenient to intellectualise our love, maybe even by thinking of it in terms of idealisation! In intellectualisation, uncomfortable feelings associated with a problem are repressed by thinking of the problem in cold or abstract terms. I once received a phone call from a junior doctor in psychiatry in which he described a recent in-patient admission as ‘a 47-year-old mother of two who attempted to cessate her life as a result of being diagnosed with a metastatic mitotic lesion’. A formulation such as ‘…who tried to kill herself after being told that she is dying of cancer’ would have been much better English, but all too effective at evoking the full horror of this poor lady’s predicament.

Rationalisation (Sour Grapes and Sweet Lemons)

Intellectualisation should not be confused with rationalisation, which is the use of feeble but seemingly plausible arguments either to justify something that is painful to accept (‘sour grapes’) or to make it seem ‘not so bad after all’ (‘sweet lemons’). For example, a person who has been rejected by a love interest might convince himself that she rejected him because she did not share in his ideal of happiness (sour grapes); and also that her rejection is a blessing in disguise insofar as it has freed him to find someone more suitable, or ‘play the field’ (sweet lemons).

Displacement and Sublimation

While no one can altogether avoid using ego defences, some ego defences are considered more ‘mature’ than others: not only because they involve some degree of insight, but also because they can be adaptive or useful. If a person is angry at his boss, he might go home and kick the dog, or he might instead go out and play a good game of tennis. The first instance (kicking the poor dog) is an example of displacement, the redirection of uncomfortable feelings towards someone or something less important, which is clearly an immature ego defence. The second instance (playing a good game of tennis) is an example of sublimation, the channelling of uncomfortable feelings into socially condoned and often productive activities, which is a far more mature ego defence.

Altruism

There are a number of mature ego defences, like sublimation, that can be substituted for the more primitive ones, like displacement. Altruism, for instance, can in some cases be a form of sublimation in which we deal with our issues by stepping outside ourself and helping others. By concentrating on the needs of others, people in altruistic vocations such as medicine, nursing, and teaching may be able to permanently push their own needs into the background. Conversely, people who care for a disabled or elderly person may experience profound anxiety and distress should this role be removed from them.

Humour

Another mature ego defence is humour. By seeing the absurd or ridiculous aspect of an emotion, event, or situation, we are able to look at it in a less threatening light. If laughter is proper to man, this must be because we, of all animals, have the most developed unconscious. The things that we laugh about the most are: our errors and inadequacies; the difficult challenges that we face around personal identity, social relationships, and death; and incongruity, absurdity, and meaninglessness. These are all deeply human concerns: just as no one has ever seen a laughing dog, so no one has ever heard of a laughing god.

Asceticism

Further up the maturity scale is asceticism, which is the denial of the importance of that which most people fear or strive for—and so of the very grounds for anxiety and depression. If fear is, ultimately, for oneself, then the denial of the self removes the very grounds of fear. People in modern societies such as ours are much more anxious than people in traditional or historical societies, no doubt because of the strong emphasis that modern societies place on the self as an independent and autonomous agent, that is, as an ego or ‘I’.

Who, Then, Am I?

There are a great many ego defences, and the combinations and circumstances in which we use them are a reflection of our personality. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum of its ego defences, which are constantly shaping, upholding, protecting, and repairing it.

If a castle amounts to no more than its fortifications, what are those fortifications protecting but themselves?

The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home. To know ourselves, then, is not to peel back our defences until we arrive at some core self, but to become more conscious of those defences and, in time, to refine them.

Such self-knowledge, if we have the courage for it, can awaken us to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us, and free us to achieve our fullest, highest potential as human beings. Perhaps, in the end, that is what a person is: their degree of openness—whereas a highly defended person is more like a bugged robot.

The greatest oracle of the ancient world was at Delphi, and there, inscribed on the forecourt of the temple of Apollo, was a simple two-word command:

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Know thyself.

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