Tuesday 20 February 2007

Can we change who we are ?

"...we have a far better chance of molding our minds if we truly know ourselves. Yet, for all our supposed self-awareness, we often have clearer views about others than ourselves. The Freudian view is that the main determinants of personality lurk in the unconscious, an area of the mind to which we do not have access, and that people have infinite capacity for self-delusion. If this is true, asking people to "know" themselves, and therefore change, is doomed to failure. We are all ready to believe that other people are driven by unconscious desires and extremely deluded about their own motives, but are far less willing to accept that we ourselves may be driven and deluded in this same way..."

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