Self-Deception

In honor of Halloween, I want to reprint parts of a story I saw in our local newspaper entitled A Haunted House by Steve Repp:

There was this old house in town that just had the look of being a mysterious place. I always thought it would be interesting to see the inside but there never seemed to be anyone around when I knocked on the door. While walking home one rainy afternoon, I thought I would try the door again just one more time. To my surprise, the door opened very slowly with the creaking sound you would expect of a haunted place. A mysterious looking person answered the door. I said I had a natural curiosity to see the house. I was shown through the house room after room but there was just something about the place that filled you with a certain kind of feeling that your every step was being closely watched by someone other than my silent tour guide. After seeing several rooms I just had to say to my host for the evening, “Surely this house is haunted!” This inquiry received no response. As we continued our tour I again repeated “Surely this place is haunted!” but again no reply. Reaching the end of this most unusual tour I expressed my gratitude at being able to see the house. I then made one last inquiry, “Surely this place is haunted, does it have any ghosts?” I will never forget the response that I received: “I have lived in this house for more than 150 years, and I haven’t seen any ghosts!”

The tour guide is blind to his own nature. He fails to recognize himself as a ghost. The ghost apparently has evidence that he has lived 150 years. A reasonable person would examine the facts that humans don’t live that long and therefore conclude that he must be a ghost. But he is in denial. He is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it, insisting that it is not true despite the evidence. (This discussion is to merely illustrate a point about denial. I leave the reader to their own beliefs of ghosts.)

Humans have a tremendous capacity for self-deception. Examples of this can be found among addictions – “I can stop anytime I want to”; or persons with anorexia nervosa – they truly perceive themselves as fat; or narcissists – they generally lack the ability to be self-critical.

As it turns out, we are not good judges of ourselves. We have some amount of blindness to our own traits. In a sense, we need a mirror to see the aspects of ourselves that are otherwise hidden. Mirrors can be found in feedback from others or from psychological tests, or from diligent reflection and examination of concrete facts. Someone in denial probably does not welcome corrective mirrors. They are invested in their preferred self-image.

Happy Halloween