Category: Philosophy

Contemplating love, loss, and mortality

Contemplating love, loss, and mortality

If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being [a mortal] whom you are kissing, for thus when they die, you will not be disturbed. — Epictetus

This is of the most notorious passages in the ancient Stoic literature. It comes from the famous Encheiridion or Handbook (§ 3). Epictetus intended his advice to be taken literally, as basic psychological training for the students of Stoicism he was addressing.

He means that we should silently remind ourselves of the fact, when kissing our loved ones, that they are mortal. Nothing about them is immune to change, and eventually they’re going to die.

Based on his comments elsewhere, incidentally, it seems unlikely that he meant we should expect not to be disturbed at all by the loss of a loved one. Rather he’s advising his students on how to increase their emotional resilience to loss by reducing their sense of attachment, within certain bounds.

We should love in accord with reason, by being brutally honest with ourselves.

In the same passage, he explains that this strategy should be applied in a very general way to anything we love or find pleasurable. We should pause to consider its true nature, avoid adding strong value judgements or emotive language, and just stick to the facts. We should love in accord with reason, by being brutally honest with ourselves. The facts are that the character of our loved ones may change over time, and one day they will be no more.

Kissing as Contemplation

The Stoics believed that most of our problems in life are caused by placing too much value on things that are not entirely up to us, and neglecting to pay attention to our own character and actions. Love that involves self-deception isn’t real love at all. Yet we deceive ourselves when we ignore the uncertainty involved in relationships. We don’t control other people and we can never be certain what the future holds.

Remembering that fact should allow us to experience more healthy gratitude for the present moment, while being prepared in advance for loss. In a sense it’s the key to loving freely, honestly, and without attachment. We can learn to love more wisely by following this Stoic advice and literally telling ourselves that we’re kissing someone who will one day be no more.

…if what we call “love” is a good thing then it shouldn’t be doing us any harm.

Epictetus discusses this in more detail in The Discourses (3.24). He says that the majority of us simply give ourselves more reasons to become upset, “more causes for lamentation”, the more friends we acquire, and the more places with which we fall in love. “Why then,” he asks, “do you live to surround yourself with other sorrows upon sorrows through which you are unhappy?”

Then, I ask you, do you call this love? What love, man!

He says that if authentic love is a good thing then it shouldn’t be doing us any harm. However, if what we call “love” is actually harmful then it’s clearly a bad thing and we should avoid it like the plague. Nature, he claims, intended us to do ourselves good, not evil.

The word for love that he uses here, philostorgia, is often translated as “natural affection” or “familial affection”. It’s the kind of love a parent has for their children. In Stoic theology, it’s the love Zeus has for mankind. Stoicism takes that as paradigmatic of rational love in general — in a sense, it’s the purest form of love. The Stoics aimed to love wisely and virtuously by both wishing that the loved one should become wise and good, while simultaneously accepting that we are all unwise, and fallible. Of course, that’s a paradox. It would require training to learn such an attitude, and maintain it over the course of our lives.

“What is the discipline for this purpose?”, Epictetus asks. How, in other words, can we learn to love wisely? First and foremost, as we’ve seen, he thinks we should learn to love things, and other people, while accepting that they may change, or be lost. He now describes this as the philosophical principle “which stands as it were at the entrance” of rational love. There are in fact many things in life which we appreciate without much attachment, he notes, such as clay pots or drinking glasses.

Epictetus goes on to tell his students here, as in the Encheiridion, that when they kiss their own child, brother or friend, they should remind themselves that one day the loved one will be gone. (In ancient Greece and Rome it was considered normal for friends to kiss on the lips.) The pleasure of experiencing their presence should be enjoyed along with awareness of their potential absence, and never as though we were taking them for granted.

Memento Mori

Epictetus compares this to “those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal.” He’s referring to the ancient tradition whereby generals, or emperors, who had been victorious in battle, would ride through the streets of Rome in a triumphal chariot. Captured enemies and treasure would be paraded before them, to the delight of cheering crowds of onlookers. Their faces would be painted red in emulation of the god Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Slaves would stand behind them holding laurel crowns over their heads, while whispering words such as memento mori, or “remember you must die”, in their ears.

Epictetus says that we should, likewise, remind ourselves that those we love, and kiss, are mortal, and do not, ultimately, belong to us. They are ours for the present, he says, but not for all time. Like figs or grapes, which are given to humanity by Nature for part of the year only, when in season, the beloved cannot be ours forever. They are merely on loan to us from Nature.

This imagery sounds very much like an allusion to the mysteries of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, famously celebrated at Eleusis, beside Athens. Whether or not Epictetus had the Eleusinian mysteries in mind, his students would have found it difficult not to make that connection for themselves. The goddess Demeter had a beloved daughter called Persephone. One day she was abducted by the god Hades, who took her to his dark underground kingdom, as his queen. Demeter was distraught at the mysterious disappearance of her daughter, and travelled the earth searching for her in vain.

Eventually, Zeus took pity on her, and arranged for Persephone to return to the world of the living. However, Hades had tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, for each of which she was fated to spend one month every year living with him in the Underworld. The fruits and grains of the harvest, sacred to Demeter, are provided by her, by Nature, only in due season, for part of the year. Persephone was likewise only with her mother for part of each year, symbolizing the cycles of nature, and the transience of all worldly things, even our loved ones. It’s a myth about coming to terms with loss, and impermanence.

Epictetus, continuing his metaphor, says that anyone who wishes for fresh figs or grapes in winter, is being foolish, by demanding something, which would be contrary to nature and impossible.

So if you wish for your son or friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know that you are wishing for a fig in winter.

Demeter was likewise forced to accept that her beloved daughter, Persephone, would always be absent for half the year. Grieving excessively over this would be as absurd as being upset that figs or grapes do not grow in winter.

When we delight in something or someone, therefore, we should place before our minds, alongside the impression of their presence, the contrary one, of their absence. That’s what it means to perceive things as transient — to experience, in a sense, their presence and absence at the same time. While enjoying the presence of his beloved, the wise man or woman does not forget about, but knowingly anticipates, their absence.

“Tomorrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again.”

Epictetus asks what harm there is, while kissing our own child, to whisper to ourselves, in our minds, “Tomorrow you will die”. While kissing their friends, his students likewise are to tell themselves, “Tomorrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again.”

He goes on to say that it is a great thing to be able to tell oneself “I begot a son who is mortal.” This is actually a well-known Greek saying, attributed to several wise man. One of them was Xenophon, an Athenian general and one of Socrates’ closest friends, whose dialogues were greatly admired by the Stoics, and elsewhere quoted by Epictetus. The story goes that someone came to Xenophon one say with the shocking news that his son had been killed while on a military campaign. Xenophon merely replied that he knew that his son was mortal. In other words, he’d long been prepared for the possibility that he might receive news of his death.

Epictetus tells his students that they should have thoughts like this always ready to hand, night and day. They must train themselves in them, by writing them down, reading them back, and discussing them with themselves and with others. In the same way, they should learn to say that they knew they were mortal themselves, and that they might lose their home, or be thrown into prison, and so on.

Conclusion

Say to yourself, when you are kissing your wife or child, that they are mortal, and prepare yourself for the fact that they shall die, he says. Tell yourself that you too are mortal, like the slaves whispering memento mori to triumphing emperors and generals. It sounds like shocking advice to many people today. However, even today, many people won’t be shocked by this. They’ll appreciate it as a means of avoiding unhealthy forms of attachment, and viewing relationships more realistically, in way that’s both rational and loving. The Stoics believed that it’s only through such an extraordinary effort to be honest with ourselves that we can achieve the strength to loves others wisely, and in accord with nature.

Contemplating love, loss, and mortality

If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being [a mortal] whom you are kissing, for thus when they die, you will not be disturbed. — Epictetus

This is of the most notorious passages in the ancient Stoic literature. It comes from the famous Encheiridion or Handbook (§ 3). Epictetus intended his advice to be taken literally, as basic psychological training for the students of Stoicism he was addressing.

He means that we should silently remind ourselves of the fact, when kissing our loved ones, that they are mortal. Nothing about them is immune to change, and eventually they’re going to die.
Based on his comments elsewhere, incidentally, it seems unlikely that he meant we should expect not to be disturbed at all by the loss of a loved one. Rather he’s advising his students on how to increase their emotional resilience to loss by reducing their sense of attachment, within certain bounds.

In the same passage, he explains that this strategy should be applied in a very general way to anything we love or find pleasurable. We should pause to consider its true nature, avoid adding strong value judgements or emotive language, and just stick to the facts. We should love in accord with reason, by being brutally honest with ourselves. The facts are that the character of our loved ones may change over time, and one day they will be no more.

Read the rest of this article on Medium.

Thanks!

That essay sounds like a real stretch to be honest but I’d be interested to check it out. I think it seems like a real long shot to retrospectively diagnose Socrates on the basis of such slender evidence, and also the counter evidence he’d have to deal with, but it might be worth a read.

Well, there’s no evidence of any symptoms of epilepsy — so I’d say that’s probably just unfounded speculation. Moreover, there are at least two pieces of counter evidence: i. we’re told he was concentrating on a problem, which he was trying to solve, and ii. he clearly ended his meditation at sunrise, with a prayer, in a deliberate manner.

Depicting the philosopher armed and in armour

Depicting the philosopher armed and in armour

“[Socrates] was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly.” — Epictetus

Most people have heard of Socrates, the ancient Athenian philosopher. However, few of us visualize him as a soldier, despite the fact that it’s known for certain that he was one. Socrates served as a Greek hoplite or heavy infantryman. He was no ordinary soldier, though, as we’ll see.

I’m currently working on a graphic novel called Verissimus, about the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. I’m also organizing a virtual conference called Stoicon-x Military, the first event of its kind. Individuals from different branches of the armed forces, in different countries, will be describing what Stoicism has taught them. The men and women I’ve worked with in the military are often fascinated by the fact that Socrates served as a hoplite but they’ve never actually seen this depicted. So I commissioned a team of artists to design a special poster for the event, showing Socrates in armour, which I’ll discuss in more detail below.

Athenian Military Training

Athens during the classical period of the 4th and 5th centuries BC did not have a standing army but rather a militia, like most other Greek city-states. Every able-bodied male citizen was expected to answer to the call to arms when ordered to do so by the ekklesia or political assembly. Most adult Athenian men therefore served as citizen-soldiers.

I will never bring reproach upon my hallowed arms, nor will I desert the comrade at whose side I stand…

All male Athenian youths, in a sense, became military cadets. Adolescent boys trained in the ancient martial arts of boxing, wrestling, and pankration, in the gymnasia, or sports grounds, of Athens, in order to prepare themselves for military service. When they reached the age of eighteen, and attained citizenship, they began two years of national service as a member of what’s called the ephebic college. This was effectively the basic training young warriors underwent to serve in future military campaigns. The oath that ephebes took has been preserved as follows:

I will never bring reproach upon my hallowed arms, nor will I desert the comrade at whose side I stand, but I will defend our altars and our hearths, single-handed or supported by many. My native land I will not leave a diminished heritage but greater and better than when I received it. I will obey whoever is in authority and submit to the established laws and all others which the people shall harmoniously enact. If anyone tries to overthrow the constitution or disobeys it, I will not permit him, but will come to its defense, single-handed or with the support of all. I will honor the religion of my fathers. Let the gods be my witness, Agraulus, Enyalius, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone.

On graduating from their first year each youth would be awarded a spear and shield, at public expense. Although there’s some debate about when this basic training began, there must surely have been some similar form of basic military training during Socrates’ youth as a degree of skill is required in order to fight competently with heavy weapons and armour in a phalanx formation — you can’t just grab a spear and join in!

Socrates in the Army

Like most other Athenian youths, Socrates would therefore have been prepared for active military service by the age of twenty. Indeed, he went on to become a hardened veteran who fought in at least three major battles of the Peloponnesian War. He continued to serve, intermittently, in the Athenian army until he was nearly fifty years old.

He would have been decorated for valour, if he hadn’t turned down the award. In 432 BC the Athenians sent an expeditionary force to besiege the rebellious city of Potidaea in the north of Greece. The siege went on for 2–3 years. It was one of the events triggering the Peloponnesian War, in which Athens and her allies, the Delian League, were pitted against the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. The siege ended in disaster for the Athenians. They were cut off from supplies and many died from starvation. The Plague of Athens had broken out back home and also spread into their camp, taking many lives.

Socrates reputedly stood over him and single-handedly defended him from the enemy,

During an enemy attack against the Athenians, Socrates’ friend and messmate, a young officer called Alcibiades, nearly lost his life. He was somehow unhorsed by the enemy, and lay wounded, having lost his armour, presumably his shield and perhaps also his helmet. Socrates reputedly stood over him and single-handedly defended him from the enemy. He not only saved his friend’s life but also recovered his armour, thereby salvaging his honour. Alcibiades was a ward of the leading statesmen Pericles and therefore a member of the most elite circle of Athenian society. He became devoted to Socrates, although later in life, as a maverick general, he became a highly-divisive and controversial figure at Athens.

This was not an isolated act of bravery. Five years later, Socrates took part in the Battle of Delium, in Boeotia, a hostile territory neighbouring Athens. This is believed to have been the first full-scale hoplite battle of the Peloponnesian War, and there were many casualties. Once again, the Athenians were defeated, and forced to withdraw under attack from the enemy. During the retreat, Socrates bravely defended the Athenian general Laches, who had apparently also been unhorsed. Plato portrayed Laches saying of Socrates:

He was my companion in the retreat from Delium, and I can tell you that if others had only been like him, the honour of our country would have been upheld, and the great defeat would never have occurred. — Plato, Laches

We’re told Socrates also took part, years later, in the Battle of Amphipolis, far from home in northern Greece. No details of his role are known. It’s possible that military service into one’s fifties was the norm during Socrates’ lifetime. However, centuries later, Diogenes Laertius seems impressed that, at forty-eight, Socrates was still in good enough physical condition to fight in close-quarters combat alongside, and against, men half his age.

Indeed, Socrates appears to have become quite famous among Athenians as a war hero. Over time, he became an experienced veteran, knowledgeable about military training, strategy, and tactics. The evidence strongly suggests that he performed a function akin, in some ways, to that of a Roman centurion or a modern-day NCO. Indeed, both Plato and Xenophon depict him liaising with, and advising, senior officers, including well-known generals, such as Laches.

Designing the Poster

One of my strategies for writing the script for my graphic novel about Marcus Aurelius was to repeatedly ask myself what amazing things I could find written about by ancient historians which nobody had actually seen depicted before.

For example, several sources tell us that the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus, the wayward (adoptive) brother of Marcus Aurelius, uncovered a gigantic skeleton encased in stone, while his men were digging a canal in Syria, during the Parthian War. Some scholars believe, quite plausibly, that it was the fossil of a dinosaur. Nobody, I presumed, had ever really seen a Roman Emperor standing over the fossilized remains of a dinosaur. So I asked my illustrator to draw it, and it’s a full page splash now in Verissimus.

By chance, I’ve been asked to speak about Socrates and Stoicism several times to the military. One of my favourite moments was getting to deliver a workshop at the US Marine Corps University in Quantico. I realized that there was something we kept talking about, again and again, that fascinated everyone, but nobody had ever seen — Socrates as a soldier or, if you like, Socrates in armour. So I thought it would be a great idea to get some artists to create a poster depicting precisely that image.

I wanted to choose a dramatic setting. Sunrise over the hills always looks good. Conveniently, one of the most famous passages concerning Socrates’ military service describes him meditating at daybreak. In Plato’s dialogue called The Symposium, Alcibiades is portrayed recounting a peculiar anecdote. He begins by saying that Socrates, early on, earned a reputation for exceptional toughness and self-discipline among the other soldiers. One morning, at sunrise, he became fixed on some philosophical problem, and stood rooted to the spot in silent contemplation, refusing to budge until he’d fully-grasped whatever he was trying to understand. By nightfall, he’d become a curiosity. A unit of Ionian soldiers, who had been fighting alongside the Athenians, and were camped nearby, carried their camp-beds out of their tents and slept near Socrates so as to observe him. He remained motionless for 24 hours altogether, until sunrise the following morning, when he said a prayer to Apollo, the sun god, and finally went on his way.

This scene is so memorable that I decided to quote the passage from Plato’s Symposium on the poster. I wanted to make it accessible so I consulted several translations, and the original Greek, and produced a slight paraphrase, which I hope captures Plato’s intention in simpler language. My friend, a classicist, Lalya Lloyd, helped me check it against the original to make sure the text’s meaning wasn’t changed much but rather conveyed more clearly to modern readers.

Kasey Pierce of Red Pen Media and Source Point Press, our freelance editor for Verissimus, supervised the design of the poster and helped coordinate the three artists involved. Her input on the overall design helped to make sure it would be very striking. Several of the military personnel who are into Socrates and Stoicism told us they love movies like Gladiator, 300, and books like Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire. We tried to create a design inspired by similar movie posters and comic book covers in terms of its overall look and feel.

The illustrator Stan Yak penciled the draft, which went through many revisions based on my feedback and input from others, especially our historical authenticity advisor for Verissimus, Leszek Kalka. I wasn’t too concerned about making everything look exactly as it would have been but we were careful to base the general design fairly closely on authentic details. First of all, we know this scene took place at Potidaea in northern Greece. So the landscape is loosely based on the beaches there, with hills in the background. We also know what Socrates looked like, from countless statues, and we know what an Athenian hoplite looked like. So we just had to put those two images together to make one — Socrates as a hoplite.

Socrates had notoriously distinctive features — so much so that sculptures of him are usually easily identifiable. (Although his image also seems to have merged over time, in some cases, with that of the comedy character Silenus whom Plato says he resembled.) He had bulging eyes, thick lips, and a broad, stubby nose — not conventionally handsome by classical Athenian standards! We know Socrates was aged around thirty-eight by the Battle of Potidaea, when this incident took place. However, we’re used to seeing him depicted as an older man, so I asked the artists to compromise and show him nearing forty but greying.

We had a lot of debate about his weapons and armour. First of all, it’s important to understand that classical Athenian weapons and armour were by no means uniform. As we’ve seen, the Athenian army was a citizen militia not a standing army. Armour was quite expensive and probably sometimes handed down in families. Different Athenian tribes, or regiments, may have had slightly different equipment.

Some warriors, especially the poorer ones, probably fought without much armour, and perhaps even sometimes in the nude. The heaviest, highest-quality, armour, such as the bronze cuirass, probably restricted movement, and would mainly have been worn by officers, typically nobles, mounted on horseback. By the 5th century BC, the armour historians today call linothorax was common, which was made of layers of cotton glued together to form a cheap material harder than cured leather.

A hoplite of Socrates’ standing would probably have at least worn linothorax, although other body armour, such as greaves, were probably optional and varied. He would almost certainly have worn an Attic style helmet and would definitely have carried a hoplon or shield. Some of the emblems on Greek shields appear to have been associated with different city-states. We can see them depicted on ceramics, for example. However, several designs appear to have been used by Athenian hoplites. We don’t know what they signify — perhaps membership of a specific Athenian tribe or regiment. However, we chose the owl shield, attested in ceramics, because of its strong association both with Athens and with philosophy. We based it on the famous drachma design, although similar owl emblems were used on ancient shields. Socrates, like other hoplites, would have been armed primarily with a spear, although he may also have carried a sword for more close-quarters fighting.

The illustrator Robert Nugent coloured Stan’s draft. He transformed the penciled design into something that wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of a best selling graphic novel. Lettering was designed by Mira Mortal. At first, I wanted to have less text on the poster — maybe losing a sentence — but I thought Mira did such a great job of the comic-book style lettering and captions that I was persuaded not to abbreviate the passage used any further.

The Hymn

Plato tells us that Socrates concluded his meditation by praying to Apollo at daybreak. The Greeks had come to associate Apollo with the sun. So it’s appropriate that Socrates would have prayed to him while contemplating the rising sun. Apollo was the god of the arts, leader of the Muses. He was the god of healing, and of disease. He was also the patron god of Greek military cadets. Depicted as a beardless youth himself, the favourite divine son of Zeus, he was responsible for the training of young men in athletics and martial arts. However, Apollo was also a patron god of philosophy. In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates mentions writing a paean or hymn to Apollo while in prison awaiting his execution.

There are many other associations between Apollo and philosophy, which would take us beyond the scope of this discussion. However, Apollo was also the god of prophecy, and his temple at Delphi, outside Athens, was the home of his priestess, the famous Pythia, or Oracle of Delphi. The pronouncements of the Oracle became famous. Today 147 of her maxims survive, virtually all of them consisting of only two words apiece.

Centuries later, the philosopher Plutarch, who was also a priest at Delphi, says that these maxims functioned like seeds from which philosophy grew, as they inspired complex discussions filling numerous lengthy treatises. Socrates himself was inspired by the two most famous Delphic maxims, engraved on a pillar at the entrance to Apollo’s temple: “know thyself” (gnothi seauton) and “nothing in excess” (meden agan). It’s tempting to imagine that he had these, his favourite pieces of Apollonian wisdom, in mind as he awaited the sunrise and said his prayers to Apollo that morning.

[Socrates] was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly. — Epictetus

Most people have heard of Socrates, the ancient Athenian philosopher. However, few of us visualize him as a soldier, despite the fact that it’s known for certain that he was one. Socrates served as a Greek hoplite or heavy infantryman. He was no ordinary soldier, though, as we’ll see.

I’m currently working on a graphic novel called Verissimus, about the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. I’m also organizing a virtual conference called Stoicon-x Military, the first event of its kind. Individuals from different branches of the armed forces, in different countries, will be describing what Stoicism has taught them. The men and women I’ve worked with in the military are often fascinated by the fact that Socrates served as a hoplite but they’ve never actually seen this depicted. So I commissioned a team of artists to design a special poster for the event, showing Socrates in armour, which I’ll discuss in more detail below.

Read the rest of this article on Medium.

Self-Consciousness and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy

Self-Consciousness and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy

Social anxiety is the generic term that psychologists use to describe nerves about public speaking and other interpersonal situations. When I was a teenager, I was very anxious about speaking. I remember asking my older sister, Sheila, to call an employer for me about a job interview because I was too nervous to do it myself. Over the years, it got much better, but the susceptibility to that form of anxiety often never disappears completely.

Some very common self-help techniques potentially do more harm than good.

Many years later, I trained as a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist and ended up working with people suffering from a range of severe anxiety disorders, including what we call Social Anxiety Disorder or Social Phobia. I learned that there are many hundreds of scientific research studies on social anxiety that tell us how it works. Modern research has actually shown us how to treat social anxiety very effectively. However, it also shows that some very common self-help techniques can potentially do more harm than good.

How Anxiety Works

One of the most well-established findings in the entire field of psychotherapy research is that most anxiety abates naturally, given the right conditions. For example, animal phobias are often considered the simplest and purest form of anxiety. If you take someone who has a snake phobia and throw them in a room with snakes what will happen to their heart rate? Within thirty seconds, it will approximately double, from about 70bpm to about 140bpm. But what happens next?

Most clients with severe anxiety will actually be temporarily stumped by that question. They want to say it will get worse, or some catastrophe will happen, although they realise that can’t be right. What goes up must come down. If they wait, their heart rate will normally start to reduce. So how long does that take? It normally takes anything from five to thirty minutes for heart rate to go from its peak level back down to something approaching the normal resting level.

So what will happen next time the same person is exposed to a snake? Their heart rate will go up again but not usually as high as before, and it will reduce more quickly each time. So with repeated, prolonged, exposure, anxiety reduces following a pattern resembling the tail of a dinosaur. Eventually, it will be permanently extinguished, or return to a milder or “sub-phobic” level of unease. Psychologists have known this for over half a century and there are hundreds of research studies demonstrating the effect of what we call “Exposure Therapy” on phobias, a process technically referred to as anxiety habituation.

So if it’s that easy, why doesn’t everyone do it already? Well, what do people most want to do when their anxiety is spiralling? Run away! The drive to get out of the situation peaks alongside anxiety, and often anticipates it. So people either avoid getting into situations that make them anxious, or if they find themselves in them, they escape as quickly as possible. That means there’s often not enough time for anxiety to abate naturally.

The main thing that will keep someone in a situation, despite their wanting to flee, is the presence of another person encouraging them. With children, it’s typically a parent who motivates them to face their fears until anxiety goes away naturally. Adults who grow up without overcoming their phobias may have to enlist a therapist, to do something similar, using Exposure Therapy. Clinical studies show success rates of up to 90% for animal phobias, after as little as three hours of exposure. However, social phobia only has a 75% success rate after about 12–15 sessions of therapy. That’s still very good but the success rate is slightly lower, on average, and the therapy takes four or five times as long. So why would that be?

Making it Worse

There are several features of social phobia that explain why it’s usually harder to treat than animal phobia. However, I’m going to focus on the biggest one. Researchers have found an extraordinarily high level of statistical correlation between self-focused attention and social anxiety. Self-consciousness and social anxiety, it turns out, are virtually synonymous.

You might say that’s just common sense and we all know it already. However, what are the practical implications of that finding? Well, doing things that increase self-focused attention are likely to be toxic for people with social anxiety. In the long-run, focusing too much on themselves prevents speakers focusing on the other people who are triggering their anxious feelings, and that prevents natural habituation from taking place.

Often techniques that people have learned from older self-help books can actually be counterproductive.

Here’s the real problem, though. Many of the strategies people use to cope with social anxiety actually increase self-focused attention. Often techniques that people have learned from older self-help books can actually be counterproductive. For example, trying to relax the muscles of your body, or trying to use breathing techniques, while speaking. These can force you to focus more attention on yourself than on the audience. So can using “thinking strategies” like repeating verbal affirmations in your head, trying to visualise success, or even some forms of mindfulness meditation.

Even worse, some of these strategies increase what we call “cognitive load”, meaning they require extra brainpower. We know that increasing self-focused attention often causes people to hesitate, lose their place, and make more speech errors. If they’re also trying to say or picture “helpful” things in their mind that often doesn’t leave enough mental resources available for speaking fluently. It generally makes their performance feel more awkward. So don’t try to walk and chew gum, in other words!

Conclusion

Nowadays we know a lot more about how social anxiety works and, in particular, that some of the ways people try to help themselves may actually backfire. On a positive note, when people practice speaking and abandon their unhelpful coping strategies they will usually improve fairly quickly. In fact, more recently it’s been shown that actually training people to focus all their attention on the audience can halve the number of therapy sessions required to treat social anxiety.

Translated and Annotated by Robin Waterfield

Translated and Annotated by Robin Waterfield

This is a brand new edition of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations from Basic Books, due for publication on 6th April 2021 in the US. (ISBN 1541673859) It’s been translated, edited, and annotated by the British classicist Robin Waterfield.

Waterfield will be familiar to many readers as the translator of numerous Greek classics. His edition of this particular text begins with a fairly detailed and helpful introduction, about 46 pages long, which tells us about Marcus’ life, the writing of The Meditations, and the Stoic philosophy upon which it’s based.

The translation itself is a welcome addition to the array of modern translations available such as those by Martin Hammond, Gregory Hays and Robin Hard. It’s a very readable modern translation, and faithful to the original Greek.

What really make this edition stand out, though, are the annotations. Each chapter begins with an introduction, commenting on the style and content. There are multiple footnotes for most of the passages of the text, explaining the meaning of obscure references, commenting on the Greek, making links with other related passages, and generally shedding light on Marcus’ meaning throughout the text. Waterfield also includes a helpful appendix with a list of the people mentioned in The Meditations, and brief biographical details about them, where available.

I’m frequently asked the question: “which is the best translation of The Meditations to get?” I think this edition will suit most people’s needs. It’s very readable but the introduction will also help many readers to better understand the context in which the text was written. The annotations will be extremely beneficial as a way of clarifying some of the more obscure passages. It’s also an indispensable resource for scholars, especially where connections are made with related parts of the same text. Some of Waterfield’s remarks about Marcus’ words are quite insightful. Overall, therefore, I think it’s a good investment.