#180: Against self-analysis
The other day, while tidying up the living room, I caught myself draping a magenta muslin cloth across my wool lilac pouf as if I were styling it for a photograph. The colors and textures were striking together; the scene gave me a tiny rush. But right behind the rush came a flash of embarrassment. The cloth wasn’t supposed to be “aesthetic,” or serve a superficial end, it was made to wipe spit-up off my baby’s face. Who was I performing for? This admonishment arrived by habit, and it wasn’t until a few days later, when I did the same thing with a new cloth in a new place, that I realized the critique was silly. I’ve had strong sensory inclinations my entire life—I was just arranging things for kicks.
I’ve been thinking about that critical impulse, the one that pushed me toward the most ungenerous reading of myself in the most efficient way possible. I imagine these impulses arriving one after another, tweaking my self-regard like a cruel puppeteer. To call this dance “negative self-talk” almost feels too pat; it’s more like a mode of operation—to analyze the self, come to unsavory conclusions, experience shame, then repeat. Most notably this loop doesn’t lead to changed behavior, it simply recurs, animating an incessant inward focus that presents as self-awareness but functions more like self-obsession.
There’s an easy connection to draw between this kind of existence and an overly therapized one. Both ennoble self-knowledge; both presume our behavior is necessarily worth decoding, that on the other side of analysis, wisdom awaits. So what do we make of the loop—whether in our heads or in therapy—whereby we don’t transform so much as refer to ourselves endlessly? Does this habit simply illustrate circumstances in which analysis has failed, or might it point to a flaw in this style of analysis itself?
Last week, as part of a series about falling out of love with therapy, The Cut published an essay in which the writer Melissa Dahl challenges the idea that therapy ought to be part of a long-term self-care regimen. Instead, she says, therapy might be better sought out as “a discrete solution to a discrete problem.” In other words, it should end. I imagine most therapists would agree with this. But there’s a difference between therapy in practice and therapy as it’s wielded in the discourse, so I understand why Dahl’s raising the alarm on what we could call therapy-creep.
While she covers an unhealthy attachment to therapy itself, and others have covered the impact of therapy on our speech and relationships, I’m curious about the way it’s impacting our inner monologues. The constant self-analysis, the picking-apart, the internal work. In collusion with capitalism and social media and the digital panopticon, seeing ourselves through a therapized lens means regarding the self as the ultimate project. It’s easy to forget there are other ways to live.
In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues that incessant decoding impoverishes and depletes art. By analyzing the content of art rather than merely experiencing it, we “set up a shadow world of ‘meanings’”—everything necessarily pointing at something else. In order to liberate ourselves from this diminishing way of seeing, she suggests valuing transparence instead. “Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are,” she writes. “What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”
I wonder if this might also be true in the context of decoding the self. Obviously a complete lack of introspection in people is alarming and in some cases dangerous, but where’s the sweet spot between that end of the spectrum and the other, deeply obnoxious one? Regarding my taste for arranging my baby’s burp cloths for pleasure, there was truly no introspection needed. I appreciate certain color and texture combinations, I like to experience beauty because I have a soul. But my muscle for second-guessing my motivations has become so overdeveloped it jumps at every opportunity to flex.
There are infinite quotidian human experiences ripe for interpreting: putting off housework, caring about who I sit next to at a dinner party, struggling to get dressed. They stack up every day. I’m particularly fond of using them to draw ungenerous conclusions: I’m shallow, selfish, lazy, dishonest. I’ve trained myself away from defending my goodness out of fear of being delusional, but now I find myself clinging to the contrary. Might this be because, unlike more generous self-appraisals, these critiques invite more self-work, further self-focus? There’s a certain narcissism to self-deprecation, to the belief that you are exceptionally bad or wrong. The resulting “need” to turn inward enables a familiar spiral. Moving onward and outward, meanwhile, requires a surer foot.
Introspection is in my nature. It facilitates my writing. But I want to be cautious of its limits. In a March newsletter that first got my wheels turning on this (coincidentally also quoted by Dahl), P.E. Moskowitz describes what they called “a culture of introspection.” “I think introspection can become somewhat of a trap,” they write, “a system by which you control yourself so that you do not disturb the peace of the world outside of you.” Therapy as an end rather than a means.
Recently I decided to stop criticizing my habit of cleaning my apartment for guests. I used to wonder why I felt so compelled to do this—what was I hiding? Was I ashamed of having a few dishes in the sink? What’s wrong with a house that’s a little lived-in? I suspect the answer is there’s nothing wrong, I just enjoy tidying my home for friends. I like making them feel like I’ve prepared for them, that my house is clean and comfortable. This impulse is probably completely fine; a mere facet of my personality. For all my questioning, I’ve never stopped doing it. Maybe it’s time to move on.
Dropping this inner monologue feels a little old-fashioned. It reminds me of the boomer generation and their penchant for not second-guessing their choices, which has always mystified me. My parents have, in return, always been in awe of how much my peers and I consider ourselves. I have no interest in adapting their way completely—systems, for instance, need more interpreting, not less—but for the more ruminative among us, there may be aspects of the boomer approach worth cherry-picking. Sometimes, and I shudder to say this, what if it really is “not that deep”?
Sontag claims that the wrong kind of interpretation has a way of overwriting a work’s true nature or purpose. It is, she says, “the revenge of the intellect upon art.” By reducing art to meanings we can articulate and comprehend, we tame it—or tame ourselves. “It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a dissatisfaction (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else.” As long as I stay unsatisfied with myself, I must continue critiquing.
To be fair, self-obsession and rumination are not the goals of therapy—close to the opposite. But I agree with Moskowitz and Dahl that quasi-therapeutic analysis has become a default way of understanding ourselves and, when applied carelessly, it can easily lead to more neuroticism as opposed to less. “To live externally is to live more dangerously,” Moskowitz writes, of giving up the constant inward gaze. “It is to live a life that takes up public space, a life that is messy and confusing and thus a life that is often frowned upon, especially in an era in which everyone is accustomed to control and curation over social space and affect.”
I’m not sure that kind of messiness will ever come naturally to me, or even suits me. But it feels refreshing, and potentially accurate, to imagine that my introspection keeps me on the surface sometimes, rather than taking me deeper into the experience of life and other people. There’s a comfort to the recursive loop of self-analysis. Not only do we deem it “work,” and thus accept it as productive, but as long as we regard ourselves ungenerously, there will always be more busywork to do.
The most gripping thing I read last week was the huge New Yorker feature by Rachel Aviv about the British nurse accused of serial murders—an article that is currently blocked in the UK. Last week’s 15 things also included some details about my first baby roadtrip, a sleeper hit from 2013, an unlikely fit god, and more. The rec of the week was warm-weather dressing tips for people who hate getting dressed in the summer. I started by giving five of my own.
On the podcast last week, Cat Cohen and I discussed some of our secret fears and dreams.
Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley
Cover image via Getty | Photo Researchers