Wittgenstein and Freud

There are few things worse than other people telling us what we think and feel. It is a fundamental attack on our right to express ourselves. It reflects an aggressive narcissism that does not respect boundaries because it does not really accept that other people exist. It is understandable, therefore, that we should want to affirm as strongly and clearly as possible that no one else can tell us what we are thinking and feeling. I am the only person who can say what is going on inside my head.

But is this really true? Although the individual has a special role in giving expression to their thoughts and feelings, this does not mean that their (sincere) accounts of what they are thinking and feeling are always 100% correct. This is most obviously true when our most personal feelings are involved. It is a cliche that when we fall in love, we tend to deny our feelings, perhaps even claiming to dislike the person we are attracted to. Similarly, when a relationship breaks down, we may say we never really cared for the other person or claim that the breakdown had little impact on us. Those around us, however, may know that neither claim is true. These examples illustrate the point that our thoughts and feelings are expressed not just in what we say but also in what we do, and people may give more weight to what we do than to what we say. 

But this contrast is not always possible. If I share my thoughts with you after a moment of reflection, there is usually no scope for you to tell me that I was thinking about something completely different. Similarly, if I tell you I am imagining a blue triangle, there is no scope for you to tell me that I am actually imagining a green circle (unless I am a non-native speaker and when I draw a picture of what I have been imagining, you become aware of my linguistic confusion!). This kind of example where the only expression of my thoughts is the account I give of them contrast with the more general situation where what I think (and what I feel) is expressed both in what I say and in what I do. In short, the key feature of our language game of the Inner is that what the individual says about their thoughts and feelings is correct (and is accepted as correct) if what they say is sincere (not based on an intention to deceive) and if it is not undermined by what they do.

Wittgensteinian accounts of this kind emphasise that what we say about our thoughts and feelings is not based on evidence (acquired via a mysterious faculty of introspection) but are utterances that are correct (and are treated as correct) if they are sincere. This may seem to support the idea that we are rational beings who possess perfect (or near perfect) knowledge of what we think and feel. But grammatical points about our concepts do not justify substantive claims about how well we know ourselves. The Wittgensteinian emphasis on sincerity needs to be supplemented (or seen as including) the possibility of self-deception. When I say something that offends someone and “sincerely” claim that no offence was intended, the fact that this incident is part of a long history of my doing and saying things that upset this particular person may lead others to reject my claim that I had no sense of the likely impact of my comment. Limitations on my self-knowledge (driven by my reluctance to acknowledge my desire to hurt the other person) raise questions about my sincerity. Here my attempt to deceive others is based on an attempt to deceive myself. My protestations of innocence may simply confirm that “on some level” I know exactly what is going on.

Recognising these points can be disconcerting. It involves moving from the reassuring idea that other people can never challenge my (sincere) account of my thoughts and feelings to a recognition that others may challenge my account if what I do (my actions, my reactions and what I later say) calls my account into question. How much of a change this shift involves depends on the extent to which we are prepared to be open to the idea that our thoughts and feelings are more complex than we like to think. When I blithely tell my analyst that I feel pretty good about my life, I may find his pensive hum unsettling. Rather than treating my answer as self-evidently correct, his response seems to be: let’s see – maybe that’s true, maybe it is not, maybe that is really what you feel or maybe there’s more to it than that. This is no longer a comfortable discussion about the grammar of our psychological concepts. Suddenly, it’s personal. What happened to the security of my inner world where no one is able to question anything I say? Am I no longer king of my inner realm? Our starting point was a rejection of the narcissist’s attempts to tell us what we are thinking and feeling, but if their claims to knowledge are aggressive and intrusive, our own claims to knowledge are often defensive. We “know” that we did not mean anything by it when we made the comment that upset the colleague we find annoying, we “know” that our criticisms of our boss have nothing to do with envy and we “know” that our curiosity about where others went to university is completely unrelated to our own excellent academic record¹. How can anyone suggest otherwise ?

The injunction to know thyself dates back to the fifth century BC or earlier, but it has always been tempting to shortcut this process and insist that we know ourselves pretty well. This temptation can be reinforced by treating the individual’s special role in our language games of the Inner as giving them an unchallengeable authority in relation to their accounts of their own experiences. This is misguided. A more reasonable approach is to recognise that it is hard to know oneself and that, without the help of others, we are likely to end up with a very partial version of the truth.

1. Talk of knowing (and not knowing) our own thoughts and feelings might seem to conflict with the approach taken by Wittgenstein who challenged the idea that we know our own thoughts and feelings. “How do you know?” he would ask, and he would point out that it is not a matter of the individual knowing what they think and feel, but of them being the person who gives expression to their thoughts and feelings. This is a vital reminder in the face of the confusions that typically arise in philosophy in relation to the inner. Wittgenstein is right that we do not usually talk about knowledge in relation to our own thoughts and feelings – except when we are underlining the grammar of our concepts to defend against misguided attempts by others to tell us what we think and feel. However, when it takes time and effort to understand ourselves, we do sometimes talk of knowledge or of a process of coming to understand something. For example, someone may say: “Initially, I tried to deny the impact that my father’s death had on me, but I now know how profoundly it affected me.” How did they find out? Not via a magical faculty of introspection, but through a painful process of reflection/grieving. ↩︎