self-deception, (1) purposeful action to avoid unpleasant truths and painful topics (about oneself or the world); (2) unintentional processes of denial, avoidance, or biased perception; (3) mental states resulting from such action or processes, such as ignorance, false belief, wishful thinking, unjustified opinions, or lack of clear awareness. Thus, parents tend to exaggerate the virtues of their children; lovers disregard clear signs of unreciprocated affection; overeaters rationalize away the need to diet; patients dying of cancer pretend to themselves that their health is improving.
In some contexts ‘self-deception’ is neutral and implies no criticism. Deceiving oneself can even be desirable, generating a vital lie that promotes happiness or the ability to cope with difficulties. In other contexts ‘self-deception’ has negative connotations, suggesting bad faith, false consciousness, or what Joseph Butler called ‘inner hypocrisy’ – the refusal to acknowledge our wrongdoing, character flaws, or onerous responsibilities. Existentialist philosophers, like Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and most notably Sartre (Being and Nothingness, 1943), denounced self-deception as an inauthentic (dishonest, cowardly) refusal to confront painful though significant truths, especially about freedom, responsibility, and death. Herbert Fingarette, however, argued that self-deception is morally ambiguous – neither clearly blameworthy nor clearly faultless – because of how it erodes capacities for acting rationally (Self-Deception, 1969).
The idea of intentionally deceiving oneself seems paradoxical. In deceiving other people I usually know a truth that guides me as I state the opposite falsehood, intending thereby to mislead them into believing the falsehood. Five difficulties seem to prevent me from doing anything like that to myself. (1) With interpersonal deception, one person knows something that another person does not. Yet self-deceivers know the truth all along, and so it seems they cannot use it to make themselves ignorant. One solution is that self-deception occurs over time, with the initial knowledge becoming gradually eroded. Or perhaps selfdeceivers only suspect rather than know the truth, and then disregard relevant evidence. (2) If consciousness implies awareness of one’s own conscious acts, then a conscious intention to deceive myself would be self-defeating, for I would remain conscious of the truth I wish to flee. Sartre’s solution was to view self-deception as spontaneous and not explicitly reflected upon. Freud’s solution was to conceive of self-deception as unconscious repression. (3) It seems that self-deceivers believe a truth that they simultaneously get themselves not to believe, but how is that possible? Perhaps they keep one of two conflicting beliefs unconscious or not fully conscious. (4) Self-deception suggests willfully creating beliefs, but that seems impossible since beliefs cannot voluntarily be chosen. Perhaps beliefs can be indirectly manipulated by selectively ignoring and attending to evidence. (5) It seems that one part of a person (the deceiver) manipulates another part (the victim), but such extreme splits suggest multiple personality disorders rather than self-deception. Perhaps we are composed of ‘subselves’ – relatively unified clusters of elements in the personality. Or perhaps at this point we should jettison interpersonal deception as a model for understanding self-deception. See also AKRASIA, FREUD, PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. M.W.M.