The Art of Illeism: Thinking about Yourself in the Third-Person

Excerpt from How to Think Like Socrates

[This is an exclusive excerpt from my latest book, How to Think Like Socrates, which is currently available in hardback, ebook, and audiobook formats.]

Aesop said that we’re born with two sacks hanging around our necks: one large sack, right under our noses, containing everyone else’s flaws; and a small one, hidden behind our back, which contains our own. Self- knowledge, in other words, is difficult. Our deepest character flaws, or biases, are visible to others but we have a blind spot for them ourselves. As the New Testament put it: you can see the tiny fleck of wood in someone else’s eye but not the great beam of wood in your own. Without a mirror for our soul, we’re often simply oblivious to our own errors. That blindness to our own errors presents a serious challenge, of course, for anyone concerned with self- improvement.

Modern psychology may help shed some light on Socrates’s proposed solution to this problem. Igor Grossmann, the head of a research center at the University of Waterloo in Canada, specializing in the psychological study of wisdom, carried out research that confirms we exhibit better judgment when considering other people’s problems rather than our own.

We chose the term Solomon’s Paradox to identify the contradiction between thinking about other people’s problems wisely, but failing to do so for ourselves. The Biblical King Solomon, known for his keen intellect and unmatched wisdom in guiding others, failed to apply wisdom in his own life, which ultimately led to the demise of his kingdom.

In one study, Grossmann and his colleagues described a hypothetical relationship problem to participants in two groups. One group was asked to imagine it was a friend’s problem, the other group’s participants, to view it as if it were their own. The group examining the problem as if it happened to a friend scored 22 percent higher on ratings of intellectual humility, 31 percent on open-mindedness, and 15 percent on compromise.

What if we could help ourselves to overcome the psychological limitations associated with Solomon’s paradox by studying our own reflection? Socrates reputedly advised some of his followers to contemplate themselves in mirrors, as a way of studying their own moral character. However, he also believed that we can see our reflection in the character of others. Socrates appears to have imagined being in his interlocutor’s shoes, sharing their assumptions and making similar errors to theirs. The Socratic method uses the person answering as a mirror, reflecting the image of the questioner. Philosophical dialogue with others helped Socrates to examine his own beliefs with greater detachment and objectivity. When we read philosophical dialogues, or, better still, engage in a real- life dialogue, we gain a broader perspective from which to consider our own way of thinking. By observing someone else’s reasoning, we can more easily imagine the consequences of holding a particular belief, such as how it might affect one’s character and actions, whether it conflicts with other beliefs, and how it might relate to a variety of different situations.

When someone asked one of Socrates’ followers what benefit he had obtained from philosophy, he replied, “the ability to hold conversations with myself.”

Moreover, it looks like Socrates himself adapted the philosophical method employed in the dialogues for solitary use. When someone asked one of his followers what benefit he had obtained from studying philosophy, he replied, “the ability to hold conversations with myself.” Indeed, we find several references to Socrates having philosophical conversations with himself, which may help to explain this intriguing remark. In Plato’s Hippias Major, for example, Socrates keeps referring to a strange man who relentlessly pesters him with questions— a close relative, who even shares his home. He waits there to challenge Socrates when he returns from his conversations. This man reminds Socrates that he should be ashamed to use words such as wisdom, justice, and beauty, if he can’t even define their meaning.

“And yet how are you to know,” he will say, “either who produced a discourse, or anything else whatsoever, beautifully, or not, when you are ignorant of the beautiful?”

He tells us that the questioner who waits for him is “Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, who would no more permit me to say these things carelessly without investigation than to say I know what I do not know.” In other words, the strange man is Socrates himself, viewed as if he were another person. It seems that even after Socrates had finished having a dialogue with a Sophist, or one of his own friends, he would continue the discussion with himself in private, in his imagination.

A closely related method involves referring to our own thoughts and actions as if we were talking about those of someone else. Third- person self-talk is known as “illeism” (pronounced ILL-ee-ism), from ille, the Latin pronoun for “he.” We don’t even need to use our imagination for this, just our words. For example, rather than thinking “I’m really upset and I don’t know what to do!” (in the first person), I might say to myself “Donald is really upset and he doesn’t know what to do!” (in the third person).

A recent pair of studies on illeism asked a total of 555 participants to record their thoughts in a journal for four weeks. To test whether wise reasoning could be cultivated in daily life, participants were to write about various social experiences that happened each day, one group using first- person and the other third-person language (illeism). Those employing illeism were found to have improved on ratings of “wisdom,” measured in the same way as above. The study also found that in some cases illeism reduced negative emotions, such as anger or frustration, in participants’ relationships.

Similar verbal techniques have long been used in cognitive psychotherapy. Aaron T. Beck and his colleagues advised clients suffering from anxiety disorders to practice detached self-awareness: “Look at your thoughts, feelings, and actions as if you’re a friendly, but not overly concerned, bystander.” They describe this as learning to “watch myself watch myself,” in language highly reminiscent of Socrates’s analogy of the eye that looks at itself. Moreover, using third-person language can, they claim, help a client to “increase self-awareness by voluntarily choosing to distance himself from his anxiety.”

Beck and his colleagues also recommended an exercise in which someone observes his thoughts and feelings throughout the day in order “to gain a more objective picture of himself.” He is instructed to replace first- person pronouns with third- person pronouns and his own name (“Bill,” for example). He therefore gives himself a running commentary, as if observing the thoughts of another person, such as, “Bill seems to be scared. His heart is beating. He seems to be concerned that others are thinking poorly of him. Bill is focusing on the impression he is making.” Similar techniques have become increasingly common in more recent “mindfulness and acceptance” approaches to CBT, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).