"There are three things extremely hard: steel, diamond, and to know oneself.” Benjamin Franklin, ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac’, 1750.
Self-awareness is what makes humans unique, for it is believed no other species are able to understand themselves in the way that we can.
The aphorism ‘know thyself’ is attributed to Socrates, the father of philosophy, who most likely saw it inscribed upon the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi inviting all who entered to read and act upon it.
It is through the writings of Plato, a student of Socrates, in ‘The Dialogues’ that the truism was expanded upon. Plato in the 30 dialogues returned a number of times to the maxim to ‘know thyself’ expressing the importance of self-understanding in making our life a success but syllogistically how this knowledge would crucially aid our understanding of others. Significantly, Plato viewed human life as a continual ‘work in progress’.
Over the last 2,000 years many other people have written about the importance of ‘knowing thyself’ include Benjamin Franklin and the founding father of US psychology, William James in 1890[1]. Nonetheless, it was not until 1972 that the psychologists Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund[2] developed the objective theory of self-awareness proposing that “when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behaviour to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves.”
According to the Swiss psychologist, Phillipe Rochat, “self-awareness is arguably the most fundamental issue in psychology, from both a developmental and evolutionary perspective.”[3] Through his research he proposed that there are ‘6 levels of possibility’ regarding self-awareness that range from ‘level 0’ (no self-awareness) through to ‘level 5’ (explicit self-awareness). Whilst Rochat was particularly interested in childhood development he concluded that these levels were as appropriate through adulthood given that self-awareness is a dynamic process where “we are constantly oscillating in our levels of awareness”.
To explain his theory of ‘levels’, Rochat used the metaphor of our self-identification in a mirror to illustrate each of the levels, fascinatingly a similar allegory was used some years earlier by the American poet, Dale Wimbrow, in a poem written in 1934 that (whilst using the male persona - an aspect of its time) is as appropriate today in its content as it was then:
The Guy in the Glass
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what the guy has to say.
For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and ‘chisel’ a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And gets pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.
Wimbrow is clear in his opinion of our need for taking a good hard look at our self - the need for brutal honesty - that underpins really meaningful self-awareness. He also points out the human capacity for self-deception and denial.
Wimbrow draws the reader to consider not just self-awareness but also the closely linked concept of self-knowledge. Self-awareness is about being conscious with what you are thinking and doing. Self-knowledge is understanding why you are thinking or doing those things.
As the ancient Greeks avowed and Wimbrow observed; people who know and manage themselves well can remain focused under the pressure and stresses of work, finding satisfaction in both their work and personal lives. In short these people are high performers. Conversely, those that fail or refuse to examine themselves are the hostages of their unconscious beliefs and past failures being poor to, at best, average performers.
[1] James, W.,(1890). Principles of Psychology, New York: Henry Holt
[2] Duvall, S., & Wicklund, R.A., (1972). A Theory of Objective Self Awareness, Cambridge, Mass: Academic Press
[3] Rochat, P., (2003). ‘Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold in early life’, Consciousness and Cognition, 12, 2003, pp 717-731