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You must look at who you are and make an effort to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge one can imagine.

When you know yourself, you will not puff up yourself like the frog who

wanted to be the equal of the ox. From an early age, most of us are taught the value of honesty

and we are swift to cast scorn on the liars who walk among us. Yet, in a striking paradox,

many who claim to be honest in their interactions with

others fall prey to the most insidious form of dishonesty, that of lying to oneself.

In this video we explore the phenomenon of self-deception and examine how it paves the way

for broken relationships and a ruined life.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself, said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Deception is a two-faced phenomenon. On the one hand, there is explicit lying, where we tell a lie to another

person, but know that we are lying. On the other hand, there is self-deception, where we tell

a lie, either to ourselves or to another, but we believe the lie we tell. It is easy to understand

why people tell explicit lies, for even if immoral,

an explicit lie can help us to evade responsibility, avoid difficult confrontations, or gain the

favor of another. But why do we lie to ourselves? We lie to ourselves because it is one of the most

effective defense mechanisms against painful thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

Whether mental pain is triggered by a sense of personal inadequacy, feelings of inferiority, self-loathing, guilt, or shame,

self-deception helps us escape these feelings. Self-deception also reduces the mental discomfort

that accompanies cognitive dissonance, or as Carol Tavaris and Elliot Aronson,

mistakes were made, but not by me. The engine that drives self-deception, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions, especially the wrong ones, is the unpleasant feeling called cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions, ideas, attitudes, beliefs, or opinions that are psychologically

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