Ozodi Osuji Ph.d
I just watched a rather long videotape by Alan Watts (1915-1973) talking about his understanding of neurosis and human growth. It is not so much that what he says is new; many people already know what he said. Most psychotherapists probably practice what he said. It is the manner in which he said it that is extraordinarily beautiful and riveting.
Mental health lies in living from your real self; mental disorder inheres in the obsessive-compulsive effort to live from your desired ideal self.
Mr. Watts articulated what Aldous Huxley called the perennial wisdom of humanity, be your true self, in exquisite English language.
YOU CHOOSE TO LIVE FROM YOUR REAL SELF OR FROM YOUR FALSE BUT IDEAL SELF
People have two options in the manner they choose to think and behave. They can choose to live from their real self, or they can choose to live from their false, ideal self.
Many children are born into a conditionally accepting society; they learn that those the Psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, calls their significant others may not accept them if they behave as they consider to be in their real selves.
To gain acceptance, children construct personas—masks or veils through which they relate to others. They believe they are safe when they behave in ways others approve of and avoid behavior that might lead to punishment.
Children are very vulnerable; if adults abandon them, they are unable to provide for themselves and may die. They have to please the adults around them. Thus, right from childhood, they use their minds to invent what Karen Horney (in her book, Neurosis and Human Growth) calls selves that they believe that the people around them would approve; they construct an ideal self-concept and ideal self-image and try to behave as them.
The ideal self is the self that the individual thinks that if he behaved as it, his parents, society, and God would approve of in him. Thus, children have a wish of who they ought to be like, think like, and behave like. It is a wish for the ideal self, but the ideal self is not who they are in fact.
No one is an ideal self, but one can wish to be an ideal self. Over time, children no longer like their real selves. They think that their real self is no good, that society and God would reject their real self. Their lives now are an act, a pretense, a mask, a persona (behind the personality, mask, veil is the real self). These people have developed what psychoanalysts call neurosis.
They present their idealized self-concepts and self-images to the people around them to relate to. If you treat them as if they are their ideal self, they get along with you. If you do not validate their ideal self, they feel like you attacked them, as if you humiliated them, and feel angry at you. If they are what David Shapiro called the active neurotic type, they express their anger at you; if they are the passive neurotic type, they avoid you but are still angry at you.
Alfred Adler, in his book, The Neurotic Constitution, said that neurotics behave as if they are their wished-for superior, powerful self; Karen Horney says that neurotics behave as if they are their wished-for ideal self.
Because they are not the ideal self but want to be it, they defend it (with the various ego defense mechanisms); they are defensive most of the time.
The ego defense mechanisms are repression, suppression, denial, dissociation, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction-formation, sublimation, fantasy, avoidance, fear, anxiety, pride, shame, and others.
They live with free-floating anxiety, anxiety from fear of other people not seeing them as their preferred ideal self.
They live with psyche conflict, the conflict between two selves: the real self (which they do not know who he is, they have been pretending to be ideal for too long to know who their real selves are) and the ideal self that is just an imaginary self, a fantasy self that they are not but wish to be and pretend to be.
The ego ideal self is an illusion of who one wants to be, but not who one is, in fact. All you can do is pretend to be it, desire it, but you can never be the ideal self. This is because the ideal is abstract and mentalistic; it is created by the mind, whereas the real self takes into consideration your body and society. You can think of becoming a champion athlete, but the state of your inherited body affects whether you can do so or not.
You can wish to be the most brilliant student, the highest IQ student, the hardest working student, the most powerful person, the richest person, and the most handsome person, etc. You are none of those, but can desire them and pretend to be them, and defend them as who you are.
What you desire for yourself, you desire for other people. Thus, neurotics desire ego ideals and see themselves as not ideal; they judge themselves by the standards of the false ideal self and perpetually see themselves as not good enough and are mildly depressed from their constant verbal self-abuse. They employ the same standards of the ideal self-concept to judge other people and see them as not good enough and put them down.
Both individuals and groups can be neurotic. Igbo neurotics, for example, are always judging other Nigerians, Africans, and black Americans with the standards of their ideal self-concepts and self-images, and seeing them as not good enough, calling them lazy. Those they call degrading names hate them and often ask them to leave their world, and if they refuse to do so, attack and even kill them.
As we talk, South African blacks, whom they call lazy, drunks, asked them to leave South Africa and are dragging them from their houses and beating them up.
In the 1960s, Hausas in Northern Nigeria, whom Igbos called insulting names, attacked them and chased them out of Northern Nigeria; many Igbos were killed in Northern Nigeria.
One would think that they learned from that sad episode and no longer call people denigrating names; no, they still call people degrading names and seem to enjoy doing so, but when those they insulted attack them, they see themselves as innocent victims who were harmed by bad other people.
In the USA, they call black Americans lazy compared to themselves, who they consider hard working. Many black Americans consider them idiots because all they talk about is making the chomp changes that the capitalist class allows folks to make, but never talk about how to organize society in such a manner that it benefits the poor; they do not talk about such ideologies as socialism, communism etc.; Their entire life consists of efforts to seem rich so that society approves of them as African Big Men.
Neurotics pursuing ideal selves, social ideals, ideal people, and ideal governments create disaster around them. They live in intrapsychic conflict, the split between their real selves and their idealized selves, and social conflicts between their real selves and the other people they have denigrated (the projection of their self onto other people). Those they denigrate dislike them with venom, and consequently, the two groups have social conflicts; neurotics disturb social peace.
They create the greatest havoc in their families. They accept their children in what Carl Rogers calls conditional manners, only when they behave as if they are ideal children, are competitive, doing well at school and sports, but badmouth them when they are simply being children, not driven to become ideal selves.
The children try to live up to the ideal picture of who they should be that their significant others and society want them to become and grow up with enormous anxiety.
Neurotic parents literally traumatize their children by always denigrating them; the children develop fear/anxiety of failing to live up to their parents’ expectations; the children are now afraid to relax and be themselves.
Neurotic parents and society create neurosis in their children and in other members of society.
Neurotics cannot simply accept themselves, other people, and society and things as they are; they always want to change people and make them seem perfect.
SCIENCE DESCRIBES THE WORLD AND DOES NOT AIM AT MAKING IT IDEAL
Science describes the world as it is and does not invent idealized pictures of how the world ought to be.
Science is not out there trying to force people to become ideal selves, ideal images, or force the world to become what it is not, perfect.
Good science merely describes physical phenomena and social phenomena and leaves it at that without the neurotic desire to change that world and make it better.
People can use the described way nature works to design technologies that help them to adapt to nature more effectively.
Perhaps some neurotic scientists try to force people to change and become ideal, and force society to become an ideal society, and force governments to become ideal governments (for example, force people to have communist governments that are putatively good for them).
A man I know used to say that you can wash the human anus with all the soaps of this world, and it would still smell of feces. People are imperfect, and no matter what you do to make them perfect, you will not make them perfect.
You must therefore accept yourself, other people and their governments, and nature itself as they are, imperfect.
Mental disorder, biological issues held constant, emanates from the desire to change people to make them become what they are not, the shifting images of perfection that no one can ever attain.
All mental disorders have a substrate of biology causing them. Anxiety disorder, for example, has biological causal factors. An anxious person has something the matter with his body that makes him or her unable to do well in society and consequently uses his mind to construct an ideal self and hopes to use that false ideal self to overcome his medical issues and thus cope better with the exigencies of his world.
Normal people, with relatively normal bodies, accept themselves as they are, not perfect; they accept other people as they are, not perfect; they accept governments as they are, not perfect; they accept nature as it is, not perfect. They live with their imperfect real selves and are not driven by neurotic drive to become an ideal self, ideal society, and ideal nature.
No one can become ideal; however, you can pretend to be ideal and, in doing so, develop delusion disorder.
A deluded person is a person who, like all of us, is not perfect but wants to become perfect; he thinks, acts, and behaves as if he is perfect; he wants those around him to see him as perfect, and if you do not treat him as if he is perfect, he feels angry at you.
Deluded people pretend to be the grandiose selves they want to become but are not. They are full of fear, anxiety, anger, and paranoia; they are always talking about their perfect selves and defending their ideal selves; they attack those who do not see them as perfect.
A white neurotic racist would like to be an ideal, and perfect person, which he is not. He hates his real self and pretends to be an ideal person that he is not.
Neurotic whites deny their imperfection and project it onto black folks. They see black folks as imperfect (true, no human being is perfect) and then justify attacking them, discriminating against them, hoping that in killing black people, they eradicate their own human imperfection.
Neurotic Igbos project their imperfections onto those they denigrate, hoping to get rid of those imperfections by projecting them onto other people. If they are healthy, they accept their imperfections and change what they can change in them and live with what they cannot change. In life, you cannot change everything about yourself. Those in flesh will always be imperfect.
The white neurotic racist and the Igbo neurotic live with free-floating anxiety, fears, anger, delusions, and paranoia; he could attack and harm other people; this is why we need to understand neurosis and change it. We do not want an Adolf Hitler who denies his imperfections, projects them onto other people, and sees the weaknesses he sees in himself in them and kills them to make him seem perfect.
WHAT IS THE REAL SELF
What is the real self that you are supposed to think and behave from? I do not know, and no one else knows, either. What is correct is that trying to live from your imaginary ideal self generates anxiety in you, but when you stop trying to think and act from that desired ideal self, you relax, feel less fear, anxiety, and anger.
Please do not let another person tell you who your real self is, for none of us knows who our real self is.
Generally, people trying to figure out who their real selves are explore philosophy, psychology, and religion.
Different people have different opinions on the real self. I accept the Buddhist perspective on this subject.
Buddhism does not tell you who you are but asks you to meditate. In meditation, it asks you to deny whatever self-concept you have, normal or neurotic. Deny that you are the self-concept, real or ideal; deny that you are the ego; deny any self that you can conceptualize and sit quietly and try to attain a mind that is swept clean of all self-concepts and self-images.
Let your habitual self-concept, your ego persona, die; let all concepts and perceptions, which are ideas based on incomplete facts, die.
When you let go of all ideas of who you are, people are, society is, things are, you feel inner silence; you are still, as if you have no self. Accept that no-self-feeling. (Anata)
The real self has no definition; it is part of life, and we do not know what life is; life cannot be defined by limiting concepts.
Just accept that you are a part of life and let it be at that. Do not judge yourself as good or bad, just be in being.
Be quiet and live in quietude. Twenty-five hundred years ago, having tried to understand the nature of life and the self and failed, Gautama Buddha sat quietly under the Bo tree. He was there for the proverbial forty days; during that time, he negated all concepts of the self that entered his mind.
In Hinduism terms, he said, “Neti, Neti, I am not this or that concept I have of me, of other people, and the world. What and who I am, I do not know.”
He was asked by his ego mind to see himself as the king of the world, surrounded by beautiful women. He said no to all those suggestions.
To be a human being is to suffer. We suffer because we have all kinds of desires. To no longer have suffering, one must give up all desires, all wishes, and simply be silent.
Gautama is said to have experienced Nirvana, an experience he refused to explain other than saying that in it one feels as one with all selves, things, and life.
There is life, and one is part of that life. In the experience of oneness with all life, he felt peaceful and happy.
Hinduism calls that experience Samadhi, a recognition that one is not the ego separated self, ahankara, that one is simply a part of all things. Brahman is life that we cannot define in words.
Zen calls the experience Satori.
Christian mysticism calls it the unity of the Son with his Father. Where the son is the father is; where you see the son, you see his father, because each is in the other. Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter fourteen. The whole contains the part; they are inseparable.
DISCUSSION
I was raised a Christian and see Jesus Christ as the epitome of the real self, a loving and forgiving self. To me, then, the real self, in religious categories, is the Christ self, the self that knows himself as the son of God, part of one unified life.
I must stop defining life! All I know is that we are all parts of one unified life, love, and light, and that is good enough for me.
Alan Watts, in his flawless Oxford English, provided us with an excellent talk on neurosis; he is the product of England’s best public colleges.
He migrated to New York, attended a seminary, and became an Anglican minister, but he felt restless. In his youth, he had studied Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, so he returned to his interest in Asian religions.
He left New York and settled in Northern California. He taught Western and Eastern philosophies at a college and gave radio talks on the subject.
In this videotape, he used real-life cases to show how we are driven to become our ideal selves: we go to school, and become, say, an attorney, and a successful one, and thereafter recognize that despite making it in that profession, we feel empty, like our lives are unlived and meaningless.
At this point, some people begin drinking heavily and or doing drugs to mask their sense that their lives are wasted, and unlived.
Watts said that, if at that point one takes the time off from whatever one did and simply tries to understand who one is (say, study psychology, Buddhism, etc.) and simply tries to be who one is, one will eventually discover who one is, and if one lives accordingly, one feels truly alive, not merely surviving.
On a personal note, in childhood, I felt driven to go to school, elementary, secondary, and university; I have loads of degrees, including a doctorate, but I felt that my education did not answer the question: who I am. Who am I?
I sort of dropped out of structured society and explored all kinds of things. Over time, I accepted Karen Horney’s psychoanalysis that told me that I was driven to become my wished-for ideal self.
In childhood, my problematic body traumatized me. I inherited serious genetic disorders, and they caused loads of pain for me. I rejected that body and used my mind to invent an ideal body and self and tried to actualize it. I wished for an ideal, perfect, powerful self, but I am none of those.
I explored all kinds of philosophies and religions, such as A Course in Miracles. I do not belong to any religious sect; I accept whatever idea feels like the truth to me.
Who am I then? I don’t know. All I know is that when I think, behave, and do everything from what I call my real self, I am peaceful and happy, and when I think or behave from the wished-for ideal self, I feel fearful, anxious, prone to anger, etc.
Thus, I tried to think and behave only from my real self. What is my real self? I do not know. Whatever it is, it makes me happy. Loving me, loving people, and collaborating with people for our common interests makes me happy. I let it be at that.
CONCLUSION
Alan Watt, wherever you are, I thank you for what you said in this videotape that I just watched on Facebook. Thank you, my friend.
As you said and corroborated by my experience, when I tried to live in accordance with my ego ideal, I experienced anxiety and behaved like a deluded person pursuing goals that other people set for me; alternatively, when I live from my real self, I pursue only goals I find in accord with who I know myself to be.
Living from the real self gives me peace, no fear, anxiety, anger, or other emotional upsets. I prefer peace to conflict, and since living from my real self gives me peace, I live from my real self.
Finally, who is a neurotic? He is a normal human being with exaggerated fear, anxiety, and anger; he is a person trying to live as his ideal self and not as his real self. His real self, like the real self in all of us, takes into consideration his imperfect body, but the neurotic does not want to be his body but instead be the perfect self his mind came up with for him.
If it were possible to live as a perfect, mentally derived self without attachment to the body, one would be egoless. The egoless mind no longer identifies with its body and does not take care of its body. His body drops off, and he exits from this world of energy, matter, body, space, and time, all illusions; he drops away from the abode of illusions and lives in non-illusory worlds, which are not the objective of this paper to talk about.
Our universe is a place of energy, matter, space, and time, and those who live in it must live in bodies; bodies and brains are instruments for sensing what is going on in the matter-based environment and adapting to it. If one no longer lives in the body, one is out of the matter-based universe and is off to one of the infinite other worlds that exist.
For now, the neurotic can reduce his neurosis by no longer trying to live from his ideal self-concept and consider the needs of his body, hence accept his imperfection and stop trying to run away from his imperfect self on earth.
The neurotic is not a psychotic, mad person. In psychosis, the individual has run away from our daily reality and completely identifies with the imaginary, perfect self and is no longer able to assess our earthly, interpersonal reality. He lives in the clouds and does not take the needs of other people into consideration. Other people leave him alone to live in the castle he built in the sky, his fantasy world.
The neurotic can assess earthly reality, while he wants to be ideal, he still understands that no one in our world is ideal, although he does not like real selves.
In contemporary psychiatry and psychology, psychotherapists no longer employ the term anxiety neurosis; they have replaced it with group C personality disorders, such as avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive, passive aggressive, and paranoid personality disorders.
The relevant fact is that these people are full of fear, anxiety, and active or passive anger.
Note
• I shared the Watts videotape on my Facebook Profile Page. Check it out.
• I am a teacher; I know that one way to find out if you understood what you read or studied is to explain it to other people. In that light, please explain what I wrote above to a friend.
• What does it mean to speak and act from your real self instead of the ideal self?
• What is the self?
Read books by and or on:
Alan Watts
Karen Horney
Alfred Adler
Carl Rogers
Carl Jung
Harry Stack Sullivan
George Kelly
B.F. Skinner
David Shapiro
Sigmund Freud
Ozodi Osuji
June 25, 2026
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