Psychoanalytic self-knowledge requires treating oneself as an external object

Evidence

Now it might seem at first thought that this position would involve an infinite regress. For if the Cartesian cogito reflects not on itself but on the pre-reflective consciousness, then in order for there to be self-consciousness, it might seem that we should need a cogito for the Cartesian cogito, another for this cogito and so on ad infinitum. But this would be the case only if self-consciousness required that the self be posited as an object, and Sartre denies that this is so. The very nature of consciousness is such, he says, that for it, to be and to know itself are one and the same. (p. 112) Consciousness of an object is consciousness of being consciousness of an object. Thus by nature all consciousness is self-consciousness, but by this Sartre does not mean that the self is necessarily posited as an object. When I am aware of a chair, I am non-reflectively conscious of my awareness. But when I deliberately think of my awareness, this is a totally new act of consciousness; and here only am I explicitly positing my awareness or myself as an object of reflection. The pre-reflective cogito is a non-positional self-consciousness. Sartre uses the words conscience non-positionelle (de) soi and puts the de in parentheses to show that there is no separation, no positing of the self as an object of consciousness. Similarly he speaks of it as a non-thetic self-consciousness. Thetic or positional self-consciousness is conscience de soi in which consciousness deliberately reflects upon its own acts and states and in so far as is possible posits itself as an object. The Cartesian cogito, of course, belongs to the second order. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 10 (#complicates, via linked claim)

To say that the for-itself has to be what it is, to say that it is what it is not while not being what it is, to say that in it existence precedes and conditions essence or inversely according to Hegel, that for it “Wesen ist was gewesen ist”—all this is to say one and the same thing: to be aware that man is free. Indeed by the sole fact that I am conscious of the causes which inspire my action, these causes are already transcendent objects for my consciousness; they are outside. In vain shall I seek to catch hold of them; I escape them by my very existence. I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075 (#expands, via linked claim)

This essential fluidity of our boundaries further implies that we also know our boundaries as such—first the individual and then in general. For only whoever stands outside his boundary in some sense knows that he stands within it, that is, knows it as a boundary. Kaspar Hauser did not know that he was in prison until he came into the open and could see the walls from without. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 787 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Any attempt at sincere self-knowledge covertly turns oneself into a thing — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 306; Psychoanalysis explains self-deception as a lie without a liar — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 283; Self-consciousness need not posit the self as an object — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 10 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-consciousness need not posit the self as an object #complicates (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 10
• Being conscious of one’s motives already places them outside the self #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1075
• Self-knowledge of one’s limits requires a vantage point outside them #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 787
• The individual self is a distinctive object of knowledge. #expands (0.72) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 7586
• The self fragments into subject and object when stress ruptures immediate experience #exemplifies (0.70) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 22