The inner critic or critical inner voice is a concept used in popular psychology and psychotherapy to refer to a subpersonality that judges and demeans a person. [1]
A concept similar in many ways to the Freudian superego as inhibiting censor, [2] or the Jungian active imagination, [3] the inner critic is usually experienced as an inner voice attacking a person, saying that they are bad, wrong, inadequate, worthless, guilty, and so on.
The inner critic often produces feelings of shame, deficiency, low self-esteem, and depression. [4] [ page needed ] It may also cause self-doubt and undermine self-confidence. It is common for people to have a harsh inner critic that is debilitating. [5]
Neville Symington suggested that such a severely critical inner object is especially noticeable in narcissism. [6]
Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss have labeled seven types of inner critics—the perfectionist, the taskmaster, the inner controller, the guilt tripper, the destroyer, the underminer, and the molder. [7]
A number of self-help books deal with the inner critic, though some use other terms to denote it, such as "the judge" or "the gremlin". There are two main approaches to working with the inner critic:
Some psychotherapists suggest that either of these two approaches may be appropriate depending on how the inner critic manifests. If the inner critic is intense and stubborn, a friendly approach of valorizing the inner critic's concerns could be helpful; if the inner critic is mild, it may be more appropriate to gently ignore it and make contact with "suppressed organismic experience". [16]
Robert W. Firestone and Lisa Firestone, in their book Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, [9] discuss how the inner voice often seems to protect a person from being hurt or feeling abandoned when in reality it reinforces feelings of shame and guilt, sabotages intimate relationships, and leads to self-destructive behaviors. Their book presents a method for externalizing the critical inner voice in order to turn self-criticisms into statements that can be evaluated objectively. [17]
Meditation or mindfulness practice is considered one effective strategy for dealing with the negative effects of critical thoughts. [18] [19] [20]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviors, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
In psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego and superego are three distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus, defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. The three agents are theoretical constructs that Freud employed to describe the basic structure of mental life as it was encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms das Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, which literally translate as "the it", "I", and "over-I". The Latin terms id, ego and superego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use.
Transactional analysis is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social interactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the communicator as a basis for understanding behavior. In transactional analysis, the communicator is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis, which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of subconsciously held ideas. Eric Berne developed the concept and paradigm of transactional analysis in the late 1950s.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathize with other people's feelings. Narcissistic personality disorder is one of the sub-types of the broader category known as personality disorders. It is often comorbid with other mental disorders and associated with significant functional impairment and psychosocial disability.
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although these traditions have tended to be less pronounced than in other social sciences, such as sociology. Psychologists study phenomena such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also study the unconscious mind.
Rollo Reece May was an American existential psychologist and author of the influential book Love and Will (1969). He is often associated with humanistic psychology and existentialist philosophy, and alongside Viktor Frankl, was a major proponent of existential psychotherapy. The philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich was a close friend who had a significant influence on his work.
In psychology, introjection is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts or personality traits of others. It occurs as a normal part of development, such as a child taking on parental values and attitudes. It can also be a defense mechanism in situations that arouse anxiety. It has been associated with both normal and pathological development.
Otto Friedmann Kernberg is an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is most widely known for his psychoanalytic theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology. In addition, his work has been central in integrating postwar ego psychology with Kleinian and other object relations perspectives. His integrative writings were central to the development of modern object relations, a school within modern psychoanalysis.
Person-centered therapy, also known as person-centered psychotherapy, person-centered counseling, client-centered therapy and Rogerian psychotherapy, is a form of psychotherapy developed by psychologist Carl Rogers and colleagues beginning in the 1940s and extending into the 1980s. Person-centered therapy seeks to facilitate a client's actualizing tendency, "an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment", via acceptance, therapist congruence (genuineness), and empathic understanding.
The Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) is an integrative approach to individual psychotherapy developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It combines systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities. IFS uses systems psychology, particularly as developed for family therapy, to understand how these collections of subpersonalities are organized.
On Narcissism is a 1914 essay by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. It consists of "the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom ... he regards as ideal."
Resistance, in psychoanalysis, refers to the client's defence mechanisms that emerge from unconscious content coming to fruition through process. Resistance is the repression of unconscious drives from integration into conscious awareness.
Coherence therapy is a system of psychotherapy based in the theory that symptoms of mood, thought and behavior are produced coherently according to the person's current mental models of reality, most of which are implicit and unconscious. It was founded by Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley in the 1990s. It has been considered among the most well respected postmodern/constructivist therapies.
Leslie Samuel Greenberg is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at York University in Toronto, and also director of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto. His research has addressed questions regarding empathy, psychotherapy process, the therapeutic alliance, and emotion in human functioning.
A subpersonality is, in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology and ego psychology, a personality mode that activates to allow a person to cope with certain types of psychosocial situations. Similar to a complex, the mode may include thoughts, feelings, actions, physiology and other elements of human behavior to self-present a particular mode that works to negate particular psychosocial situations. American transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber and English humanistic psychologist John Rowan suggested that the average person has about a dozen subpersonalities.
Lama Tsultrim Allione is an American author and teacher who has studied in Tibetan Buddhism's Karma Kagyu lineage. She has been recognised by two different Tibetan Buddhist lamas as an emanation of Machig Labdron, the 11th/12th century CE female founder of several chöd lineages.
Resistance is a concept created by American novelist Steven Pressfield that illustrates the universal force that he claims acts against human creativity. It was first described in his non-fiction book The War of Art and elaborated in the follow-up books Do The Work and Turning Pro, and in other essays. It is also a recurring theme in some of his fiction novels such as The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Virtues of War.
The Inner Critic is roughly synonymous with the Freudian superego (Freud, 1923/1949a) ['The ego and the id']. However, there are important differences. Freud (1914/1949b) ['On narcissism: an introduction'] saw the superego as composed of two parts: the ego ideal, which sets standards, and the conscience, which punishes the person for not meeting those standards. AT's [anthetic therapy] concept of the Inner Critic is similar: The 'shoulds' are the standards (ego ideal), which are imposed by the Inner Critic (the punitive conscience).
There are, indeed, not a few people who are well aware that they possess a sort of inner critic or judge who immediately comments on everything they say or do. Insane people hear this voice directly as auditory hallucinations. But normal people too, if their inner life is fairly well developed, are able to reproduce this inaudible voice without difficulty, though as it is notoriously irritating and refactory it is almost always repressed.
Instead, consider beginning to honor the resistance, consider getting to know the critic. The critic holds very valuable information.
I'm just a small, scared person trying to make good art in the world. Perhaps I'm not so different from this even smaller, infinitely more scared creature trying to keep me safe. So take whatever input that creature gives you, acknowledge it, and then make the choices that genuinely nourish you without fear of punishment or guilt.
The research demonstrated that a variety of strategies was used to encourage the inner critic into motion. A flexible approach, tailored to the nature and intensity of the inner critic, appeared to offer the best chance of success. A critic-friendly approach that is attuning to the critic's feelings and concerns and valorizing these appeared to be more beneficial when the critic manifested itself in a stubborn and intensive way. Where the critic presented a milder manifestation the critic could be more easily set aside at a distance or contact could be made with the suppressed organismic experience. Maintaining a uniform approach to the problem without any regard to the way in which the critic was gradually being expressed, appeared to delay the therapy process or even, in certain cases, to be counter-therapeutic, particularly where the critic was quite intense.