One of my favorite movies is “The Last Days of Disco”, and one of my favorite lines from that movie goes like this:
You know that Shakespearean admonition, ‘To thine own self be true’? It’s premised on the idea that ‘thine own self’ is something pretty good, being true to which is commendable. But what if ‘thine own self’ is not so good? What if it’s pretty bad? Would it be better, in that case, not to be true to thine own self?
Catharsis
Vulgar Freudianism holds that “repression” is the root of all evil, and that the key to psychological health is to express one’s emotions. This may not be true. If the effect of expressing negative emotions is in fact to enhance rather than dissipate them, then the cathartic viewpoint is worse than useless; it is actively destructive, since it induces those who hold it to enter into a feedback loop of antisocial emotions and behaviour.
Just Do Better
Stripped of the pseudo-scientific jargon of “catharsis”, self-indulgent behavour is revealed for exactly what it is. In the absence of vulgar Freudianism, we can see that being a flawed person is no excuse for bad behaviour.
More generally, it’s preferable to act like the person you’d prefer to be, as opposed to simply doing what “feels right” at the moment, on the theory that to do otherwise would inflict some sort of psychological harm.
