Just as you are careful, in walking about, not to step on a nail or to sprain your ankle, so be careful also not to hurt your governing principle. And if we observe this rule in every action, we shall be more secure in setting about it.

Commentary

Epictetus is talking about prosoche or attention to ourselves, which we can call “Stoic mindfulness”. Socrates famously walked barefoot and, ironically, was friends with Simon the shoemaker, in whose shop he would sometimes discuss philosophy. Socrates’ friend and follower Antisthenes, and the Cynics who are were sometimes believed to have followed his example, were particularly known for going barefoot. In fact, there is a famous play about Socrates titled Barefoot in Athens, for this reason.

Diogenes Laertius quotes an Athenian satirist, Ameipsias, a contemporary of Socrates, who wrote of him: “Your sorry plight is an insult to the cobblers.” Likewise, Aristophanes wrote of Socrates in The Clouds: “You stalk along the streets, rolling your eyes, and endure, barefoot, many a hardship, and gaze up at us the clouds.”

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If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you know that most of what I write links ancient Stoic philosophy to self-improvement and the challenges of modern living. What I haven’t done before is focus on five practical techniques and teach them to you directly, one at a time. That’s what we’ll be doing in this miniseries.

The Stoic Mind is based on a two-hour workshop that I developed, called Ancient Wisdom for Modern Anxiety. I’ve been studying the Stoics for three decades and teaching these techniques to therapy clients, workshop participants, and readers for most of that time. I’ve been impressed, again and again, by how well they work. They’re not important just because they’re ancient, but because they often anticipate modern evidence-based psychological techniques.

Before we get started, let me explain what this miniseries is all about. It’s not a series of history lessons or philosophy lectures. It’s a practical guide for putting Stoic philosophy to work in daily life.

Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.49

Consider the image below, which depicts a Stoic statue looking down at a storm. I like to think it’s not because he’s escaped it, but because he’s able to use his vantage point to calmly take it in.

That’s what these five techniques are designed to give you: the ability to stand steadily and see clearly through the chaos. And together they form a basic system. Each one builds on the last, and in the final lesson of the miniseries I’ll show you how all five fit together.

The Five Techniques

In each of the first five lessons, you’ll learn one of the five techniques. They include how to:

1. Detach from Anxious Thoughts (Stoic Mindfulness). This core technique from modern Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which was originally inspired by the Stoics, teaches you how to observe your anxious thoughts without getting entangled in them. You’ll gain the ability to create a space between you and your worries, giving you more control over your reactions.

2. Mentally Rehearse Coping (Premeditation of Adversity). Inoculate yourself against stress and build emotional resilience by calmly contemplating future challenges. This isn’t about worrying; it’s about progressively reducing your fear of the unknown and developing the confidence to handle whatever life throws at you.

3. Make Wise Decisions (Contemplation of the Sage). Discover a practical method for navigating difficult situations. This technique involves constructing an “inner mentor” based on the wisdom of figures like Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, and consulting them when you feel anxious or overwhelmed. It provides a clear framework for more rational and rewarding behaviour.

4. Find Strength in Your Own Values (Stoic Virtue Ethics). Come to understand how the Stoics found an unshakable source of confidence and tranquility not in external events, but in their own character and values. You’ll learn how to focus on what you can control, making you less vulnerable to the things you can’t.

5. Put Your Problems into Perspective. (The View From Above.) Discover a powerful Stoic meditation technique that helps you gain a “cosmic” vantage point. You’ll learn how to put your everyday worries into a much larger context, reducing their emotional impact and allowing you to see the bigger picture.

In the final lesson, we’ll bring all five techniques together as a system for managing anxiety. This lesson will be for paid subscribers only. (See more on that below.)

About This Miniseries

If you’re already a subscriber, you know what this newsletter’s about. The Stoic Mind sits inside it. It’s a six-lesson miniseries running within Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life, publishing every second Tuesday.

Lessons 1 through 5 are for everyone. Each will teach you a complete technique, for free, with enough context and practical detail to actually use it and benefit from it. I don’t believe in withholding the substance from my readers.

What I’m offering paid subscribers within each lesson is something different, however: a deeper, guided experience of the same material. The paid portion of each lesson will contain an audio of me walking you through the technique, the way I do in my workshops. Many will also include a downloadable resource or practice tool, such as a worksheet or reference card. Think of the paid tier as the workshop version of The Stoic Mind.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come.

Download the Infographic

The infographic is an example of the kind of resource paid subscribers will receive throughout the series. While it’ll mean more after you’ve worked through the series, it’ll help you right now to see how the five techniques fit together.

The Stoic Mind Infographic

128KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download this PDF of the infographic, which outlines the five practical techniques taught in The Stoic Mind.

Download

Listen to the Audio

The audio’s my personal welcome to you. Consider it the opening of the workshop.

The paid portion of each lesson includes a guided audio recording, and many also include a practical template or worksheet. Lesson 6, the final lesson, is available to paid subscribers only and is a complete synthesis of all five techniques. In it, you’ll receive a longer coaching-style audio in which I guide you through using all five techniques together as a complete system.

Claim your Special Offer

To mark the launch of The Stoic Mind, new paid subscribers get 25% off for a limited time. Get full access by November 3, 2026, and you’ll unlock the full guided course, including audio practices, worksheets, reference cards, and the synthesis lesson.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to a paid subscription, this miniseries is the perfect opportunity to do it, because the audio and practice tools make a genuine difference to how well the techniques actually stick.

I’m looking forward to this. These are techniques I’ve used myself, taught to clients, and written about for years. Putting them together in this format, in the right order, with time to breathe between each one, feels like the right way to share them.

See you in two weeks.

Donald Robertson

I’ll be giving a talk on Marcus Aurelius and the practical application of Stoic philosophy at Indigo Pointe-Claire, followed by a Q&A and book signing.

The event takes place on Sunday, October 11, and only 20 places are available. Reserve your ticket through TicketScene.

Reserve your Place

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

In conversation with Donald Robertson

Sunday, October 11, 2026
Indigo Pointe-Claire (map)
Doors open: 2:30 p.m.
Talk and Q&A: 3:00–4:00 p.m.

Tickets: $5, or $30 including a signed paperback copy of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

Only 20 places available

What can the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius teach us about coping with adversity, managing difficult emotions, and living with greater purpose?

In this talk, I’ll explore some of the central ideas in How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and explain how ancient Stoic philosophy anticipated several techniques used in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy. We’ll look at practical ways to apply these ideas in everyday life, followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

The event is suitable both for readers who are new to Stoicism and for those already familiar with the philosophy. Reserve your place through TicketScene.

Reserve your Place

I recently travelled to Topanga in California to have a conversation about philosophy with Andre Duqum for his Know Thyself YouTube channel. Andre has a beautiful studio and he’s a wonderful interviewer. We spoke for four and a half hours.

On the trip from Laguna Beach, my Uber driver was a great guy, who was really into yoga and philosophy. I’d already been talking nonstop for nearly two hours when I arrived at Andre’s place, so you can probably hear by the end my voice is starting to get a little tired! But I wouldn’t change anything about it. It was a great day and we had a fantastic conversation. Enjoy!

The misconception that Stoics are unemotional like a robot or, as they put it, a statue is so widespread that I’ve decided to put together some brief notes to summarise the opposing view, taken with modifications from my book Stoicism and the Art of Happiness (2013).

The modern word “stoicism” (lowercase) means someone who has a stiff upper-lip, or more specifically someone who suppresses or conceals unpleasant or embarrassing emotions. The word “Stoicism” (capitalized) denotes the ancient Greek school of philosophy, which has a much more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of human emotion. People often confuse these two concepts, though, and the Internet is awash with blog posts and podcasts in which stoicism, the unemotional coping style, is confused with Stoicism, the philosophy. In this article, I’ll explain the difference, and show how the Stoics, borrowing language from Socrates, consistently rejected the idea that their philosophy was about eliminating our feelings.

Socrates, Antisthenes, and the Cynics

In Plato’s Apology, during the trial that led to his execution, Socrates says to the jury that some of them may judge him harshly because he does not throw himself at their feet, begging for mercy and weeping profusely, as others have in the past. To these men, he would say:

My friend, I too have relatives, nor I am, as Homer has it, “born of an oak or a rock,” but of human parents. (Apology, 34d)

In other words, although Socrates was famous for his equanimity, even in the face of danger, he was nevertheless a human being, of flesh and blood, and had natural feelings, such as concern for the welfare of his wife and children.

We’re told that Antisthenes, one of Socrates’ friends and students, learned apatheia, or freedom from unhealthy passions, from him, and that his work later inspired the Cynic tradition.

From [Socrates], having acquired his endurance and having emulated his freedom from passion [apatheia], he was the first to inaugurate Cynicism.

Diogenes Laertius goes on to say that the Cynics and Stoics derived some of their teachings from Antisthenes, presumably including their conception of apatheia, which does not mean “apathy” or being unemotional, like a tree or a rock, but having feelings appropriate to a human being, and being free from unhealthy passions.

Apatheia in Stoicism

Diogenes Laertius therefore emphasized that the founders of Stoicism did not mean what some people think by their use of the word apatheia, which literally means “free from passions”.

They say the wise man is also “free from passions”, because he is not overcome by them. But the bad man is called “free from passions” in a different sense, which means the same as “hard-hearted” and “insensitive”. (Diogenes Laertius, 7.117)

Today we might perhaps say that someone wise is “unemotional” in a good way, meaning they have overcome unhealthy fears and desires, but we may also call certain unwise people “unemotional” in a bad way, meaning that they are merely unfeeling and callous. Despite the fact that the Stoics explicitly sought to correct this misconception. It’s still extremely common today. We see several ancient authors openly rejecting the idea that the goal of Stoicism was to be unemotional, in the sense of being apathetic and insensitive, and in doing so they often use similar language to Socrates.

For instance, Epictetus repeatedly says that Stoics ought not to pursue freedom from passions (apatheia) in the sense of trying to be unfeeling “like a statue”. He links natural feelings with “appropriate action” and maintaining one’s natural and acquired relationships, as a family member and a citizen (Discourses, 3.2). To be completely devoid of feelings may, therefore, be natural to a statue but not to a human being.

Neither then is it possible for a man completely to lose the movements [i.e., feelings] of a man; and even those [eunuchs] who are deprived of their genital members are not able to deprive themselves of man’s desires. (Discourses, 2.20)

Cicero likewise portrays the Roman Stoic Laelius as saying that it would be the greatest possible mistake to try to eliminate feelings of friendship, because even animals experience natural affection for their offspring, which Stoics viewed as the foundation of human love and friendship (Laelius, 13). We would not only be dehumanising ourselves by eliminating natural affection between friends, he says, but reducing ourselves below animal nature to something more like a mere tree-trunk or a stone and we should turn a deaf ear to anyone who foolishly suggests that the good life entails having “the hardness of iron” in terms of our emotions. This even more clearly echoes the Homeric quote (”born of an oak or a rock”) used by Socrates in the Apology, to explain the nature of his feelings.

Seneca makes the same point, employing similar language, saying that the Sage is still a man and should not be imagined having the emotional “hardness” of a rock:

There are misfortunes which strike the sage – without incapacitating him, of course – such as physical pain, infirmity, the loss of friends or children, or the catastrophes of his country when it is devastated by war. I grant that he is sensitive to these things, for we do not impute to him the hardness of a rock or of iron. There is no virtue in putting up with that which one does not feel. (On the Constancy of the Sage, 10.4)

This final point is, I think, decisive for the Stoics. The man who feels no trace of fear or desire can hardly be said to exhibit the virtues required to overcome them. How can someone be called courageous who is simply incapable of experiencing fear? How can someone be considered temperate, or self-controlled, who has no more feelings of desire than a rock does? Ironically, the Sage must have at least incipient feelings in order to exercise the cardinal virtues of fortitude and temperance. The Stoics refer to these incipient, automatic, feelings as “proto-passions” or as the “first movements” of the psyche in response to an impression.

Against the Epicureans

For this reason, Seneca elsewhere explains that whereas the goal of Epicureanism is “a mind immune to feeling”, this “unfeelingness” is actually the opposite of what the Stoics desire.

This is the difference between us Stoics and the Epicureans; our wise man overcomes every discomfort but feels it, theirs does not even feel it. (Letters, 9)

The virtue of the Sage consists in his ability to endure painful feelings and rise above them, with magnanimity, while continuing to maintain his relationships and interaction with the world. Seneca returns to this point several times:

I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of man, nor do I deny to him the sense of pain as though he were a rock that has no feelings at all. I remember that he is made up of two parts: the one part is irrational, — it is this that may be bitten, burned, or hurt; the other part is rational, — it is this which holds resolutely to opinions, is courageous, and unconquerable. […] You must not think that our human virtue transcends nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain, will turn pale, for all these are sensations of the body. (Letters 71)

The Epicurean ideal, usually described as ataraxia, or freedom from all disturbance (such as pain or anxiety), is normally contrasted with the Stoic ideal of apatheia, freedom from being overcome by passions not complete insensibility. As we’re told Zeno put it, what the Stoics meant by a “passion” is “an irrational and unnatural movement [feeling] in the psyche” and “an excessive impulse” or desire. Stoic apatheia therefore specifically means freedom from unhealthy, irrational, and excessive desires and emotions.

This may be one reason why Stoicism has become popular with modern psychotherapists, whereas Epicureanism has not. The Stoic position corresponds much better with the goal of mental health as defined by modern psychology. Epicureanism sounds closer to what researchers today call “experiential avoidance”, meaning an urge to get rid of unpleasant or painful feelings. The excessive effort to avoid emotional disturbance has been found to correspond, not with emotional resilience, but with greater vulnerability and poorer mental health outcomes in the long-run. The Stoics, in other words, were closer to the truth than the Epicureans.

Conclusion

The English philosopher, James Harris, attempted to refute this misconception of Stoicism at some length, citing numerous ancient passages as evidence.

The word παθος [pathos], which we usually render a passion, means, in the Stoic sense, a perturbation, and is always so translated by Cicero; and the epithet απαθης [apathes], when applied to the wise man, does not mean an exemption from passion, but an exemption from that perturbation which is founded on erroneous opinions. The testimony of Epictetus is express to this purpose. I am not, says he, to be apathetic like a statue, but I am withal to observe relations both the natural and adventitious; as the man of religion, as the son, as the brother, as the father, as the citizen. – Harris, Dialogue Concerning Happiness, 1744

Prof. Margaret Graver’s book Stoicism and Emotion, analyzes the ancient sources in great detail and concludes that feelings always played a role in the psychology of the wise, the Stoic goal or ideal.

The founders of the Stoic school did not set out to suppress or deny our natural feelings; rather, it was their endeavor, in psychology as in ethics, to determine what the natural feelings of humans really are. With the emotions we most often experience they were certainly dissatisfied; their aim, however, was not to eliminate feelings as such from human life, but to understand what sorts of affective responses a person would have who was free of false belief.

Recently, Prof. Brad Inwood, one of the leading academic experts on Stoic philosophy today, has made this point very clearly in his book, Stoicism: A Very Brief Introduction, where he states:

There is a stereotype of Stoicism familiar to everyone, the claim that Stoicism involves being relentlessly rational, but without a trace of emotion—Mr Spock from Star Trek, only more so. That this isn’t the right view of Stoicism is now generally understood, and specialists will even point out that the passions (pathē) from which the Stoic wise person is said to be free are not what we mean by emotions but a more narrowly defined group of states of mind that are by definition pathological. The wise person may well be perfectly rational, but that doesn’t deprive him or her of all affective or emotional experience.

Another excellent introduction to Stoicism by a leading academic scholar in this field, Lessons in Stoicism by Dr. John Sellars, arrives at the same conclusion.

In modern English the word ‘stoic’ has come to mean unfeeling and without emotion, and this is usually seen as a negative trait. […] When the ancient Stoics recommended that people ought to avoid emotions, it was these negative emotions [such as anger] that they primarily had in mind.

He adds,

Contrary to the popular image, the Stoics do not suggest that people can or should become unfeeling blocks of stone. All humans will experience what Seneca calls ‘first movements’. These are when we are moved by some experience, and we might feel nervous, shocked, excited or scared, or we might even cry. All these are quite natural reactions; they are physiological responses of the body, but not emotions in the Stoic sense of the word. Someone who is upset and momentarily contemplates vengeance, but does not act on it, is not angry according to Seneca, because he remains in control.

And he concludes,

The Stoics certainly do not envisage turning people into unfeeling blocks of stone. So, we’ll still have the usual reactions to events – we’ll jump, flinch, get momentarily frightened or embarrassed, cry – and we’ll still have strong caring relationships with those close to us. What we won’t do, however, is develop the negative emotions of anger, resentment, bitterness, jealousy, obsession, perpetual fear or excessive attachment. These are the things that can ruin a life and that the Stoics think are best avoided.

I hope these quotes from modern scholars, as well as those from the primary sources above, are enough to clarify the Stoic concept of apatheia, a word which implies something close to the outcome of psychotherapy — overcoming desires and emotions that are unhealthy, excessive and irrational.

People often view Marcus Aurelius as the voice of calm, detached, serenity, but make the mistake of assuming that he was completely emotionless.

The real Marcus was more interesting than that. He experienced grief, wept, and worried. He struggled with anger, fear, illness, bereavement, war, plague, political intrigue, and the moral burden of ruling the whole Roman Empire.

I wrote Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, for the Yale University Press Ancient Lives series, to tell the real story of the man behind the Meditations.

Here is a short passage from the opening of the book:

Marcus Aurelius did not have a heart of stone. When the news was brought to him that one of his most beloved tutors had died, the young Caesar was distraught, and tears poured down his cheeks. Palace servants, afraid his reputation would be harmed by such a public display of raw emotion, rushed to his side, trying to restrain him. His adoptive father, the emperor Antoninus Pius, a thoughtful and gentle man, gestured for them to step aside. He whispered, “Let him be only a man for once; for neither philosophy nor empire takes away natural feeling.”

That episode captures one of the most important things to realize about Stoicism. Stoicism was not about becoming cold or inhuman. It was about learning how to experience natural feelings without allowing grief, fear, anger, or desire to overthrow reason.

For example, we’re told that the early Stoics, who founded the school were careful to distinguish between being “free from passions” in the therapeutic sense and merely being unemotional and hard-hearted.

They say, moreover, that the Sage is free from unhealthy passions [has apatheia], because he is not prone to be overcome by them. But they add that in another sense the term apatheia is applied to the vicious man, when, that is, it means that he is hard and insensitive.

Marcus, therefore, did not aspire to be “stoic” (lowercase), or cold and unemotional, but to be wise and unperturbed by strong emotions.

My biography of Marcus Aurelius, explores his life in context: his childhood, his mother Lucilla, his Stoic teachers, the shadow of Hadrian, the example of Antoninus Pius, the wars, the plague, and the experiences that shaped the philosophy of the Meditations.

If you have read the Meditations and want to understand the man who wrote it, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

Read or listen on Amazon

I’d be curious to read your answer to the poll, and hear about your reasons in the comments section.

In this episode, I talk to award-winning historian, and novelist, Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy. He is the author of numerous books on ancient history, especially the Romans, and we’ll be discussing his latest one, which came out in May, Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry that Shaped Ancient Greece.

Highlights

• Do you think readers will perceive any parallels between ancient Athenian politics and recent history?

• What are our sources like for this period? How biased are they? What’s missing?

• How Athenian were the Spartans and how Spartan were the Athenians?

• How did Athens and Sparta become rival powers? What set the stage for the Peloponnesian War?

• What can we learn about the strengths and weaknesses of democracy from the Athenians?

• What was the status of slaves and women in Athens and Sparta?

• What can we learn about how alliances work, or don’t work?

• What role did ancient “technological” advantage play in the outcome of the war?

• What would have happened if the Athenians had stuck to the military policies of Pericles?

• Was Sparta a bit of a myth? How distorted is the popular image of the Spartans today?

• If the Athenians had conquered Sicily and defeated Sparta, would they have invaded Persia? (What caused the Sicilian disaster?)

Links

• Adrian Goldsworthy’s Amazon author profile

• Athens and Sparta on Amazon

I talk with Prof. Massimo Pigliucci about Stoicism, Cicero, and his forthcoming book How to be a (Happy) Skeptic.

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with !

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In a recent article, I told the story of how a forgotten form of psychotherapy from the Second World War was used by military psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley to treat American soldiers suffering from combat stress, now called PTSD. (Link at the bottom of this page.) This short follow-up article focuses on how you can apply the same ideas today for self-improvement. It explains, in practical terms, the key techniques that we can learn from this old-school approach to trauma, developed in the field during the campaign in the South Pacific. It will show you how to train the nervous system to distinguish your present reality from distressing memories.

A World War II veteran returned home from the South Pacific afraid of the dark.

This was no childish fear. His nervous system had come to associate darkness with the frequent threat of enemy fire, at dead of night, in the South Pacific jungles. He’d watched his friends die right before his eyes. Now, back in civilian life, his brain remained constantly on alert for sudden movements. Even in the safety of Denver, Colorado, his body still reacted as if darkness meant danger, and for a while he was afraid just to step outside in the evenings.

The method that helped him was surprisingly simple. He forced himself to go out for long walks at night, down side streets, while continually reminding himself that the darkness he now encountered was not identical with the darkness he had experienced while serving the Pacific War.

In other words:

This darkness is not that darkness.

Darkness (here and now, 1946, in Denver) ≠ darkness (back there and then, 1942-1945, in the South Pacific jungles)

That phrase captures one of the most useful ideas in a forgotten precursor of modern cognitive therapy known as General Semantics. Alfred Korzybski, its founder, is now mostly remembered, if at all, for the saying: “The map is not the territory.” Our words and mental images are like maps. They may be useful. Some maps are more accurate than others. But a map is just a map. It is never completely identical with the reality it represents.

Our nervous system often deals in generalizations. Not “this darkness right now is dangerous” but merely “darkness means danger.” Emotional problems often arise, or are made worse, when we fail to make clear distinctions.

This person is not that person.

This place is not that place.

This darkness is not that darkness.

Have you ever noticed that maps refer to themselves? Right there printed on the page there are instructions on how it should be interpreted. There’s usually a key, or “legend”, that tells you what the symbols mean, and a scale used to convert the distances. In fact, one of the most important pieces of information you’ll find printed on any map is the date on which it was published. If you’re using a map dated 1976 in the year 2026, you may get quite lost, and feel confused and disorientated, if the landscape and paths have changed significantly. Once you notice the date written on the page, though, you will realize that it could still contain useful information but may no longer correspond with the real terrain.

Language and thought have the same ability to refer to themselves. We can talk about our speech, and think about our thinking. We do it all the time. Get into the habit of making a mental note to remind yourself that your mental map has certain limitations. That’s the psychological equivalent of adding a key to a printed map.

Rather than saying “I hate the dark”, slow down and spell it out more accurately: “I did hate the dark back there and then, in 1946, in the jungle, but this darkness, tonight in Denver, is not identical with that darkness.” It might seem a little pedantic at first but with practice, you can train your nervous system to understand that these are two different situations. A thought or memory that’s undated can be as misleading as a map that’s undated. At first glance, you may feel like this is stating the obvious, and you already know that this darkness is not that darkness, etc. However, knowing it intellectually and responding to it emotionally are two different things. It takes practice to make this stick at an emotional level.

WWII Rational Therapy

The psychiatrist who pioneered this wartime application of General Semantics was Dr. Douglas M. Kelley. He is better known today as the chief psychiatrist responsible for assessing the Nazi high command before the Nuremberg trials, portrayed by Rami Malek in the 2025 film Nuremberg. However, before Nuremberg, Kelley served as Chief Consultant in Clinical Psychology for the European Theatre of Operations during the Second World War.

In that role, he oversaw the training of “hundreds of battalion-aid surgeons”. Together, they provided psychotherapy, both remedial and preventative, to over seven thousand US soldiers. Many of whom were suffering from what was then called “war neurosis,” “battle fatigue,” or “combat stress.” In retrospect, many of these cases resemble what we would call posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although the modern diagnostic term did not exist at that time. These men were often suffering from severe anxiety, hypervigilance, intrusive memories, and extreme nervous reactions to reminders of traumatic combat experiences.

This was more than a decade before Albert Ellis developed Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), the earliest form of modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Psychoanalysis still dominated psychiatry at that time but during the Second World War it proved of little or no use in the theatre of operations. Soldiers needed brief therapy, taking less than a dozen sessions, and consisting of direct advice, rather than hundreds of hours of dream analysis and other such indirect methods. Even better would be preventative psychological training, delivered in groups, which could build emotional resilience. They needed something practical: a way of understanding what was happening to them and regaining their capacity to function under the extreme stress of combat.

Kelley and others therefore adopted shorter-term, more psychoeducational methods. Kelley was particularly interested in the principles of General Semantics, which he believed had practical value both for prevention and treatment. Korzybski himself, incidentally, had served during the First World War, in the Russian army, and still walked with a cane, due to the injuries he sustained in combat. When he first arrived in America, after the war, it took him months to get used to sleeping at night without the sound of constant artillery fire in the background. He understood, from personal experience, that the nervous system can continue responding to old dangers long after they have passed.

One of his most important observations was that the original fear reaction is often less damaging than what he called second-order reactions: fear of fear, nervousness about nervousness, worry about worry. This remains a central point in modern anxiety treatment. Panic about anxiety can intensify anxiety. The belief that normal traumatic reactions mean we are “broken” can make them much worse.

General Semantics was not psychotherapy in the narrow sense. It was intended as a general training in sanity, scientific thinking, and orientation to reality. Yet it had obvious therapeutic implications. It taught people to become more conscious of the way they abstract, label, generalize, and identify one thing with another. In everyday language, it trained people to ask: Am I reacting to the facts before me, or to my map of those facts? Am I reacting to reality or my way of thinking about reality?

The Map Is Not the Territory

Korzybski distinguished between what he called “intensional” and “extensional” thinking. The terminology may be unfamiliar, but the basic idea is simple. Intensional thinking is dominated by words and their verbal definitions. Extensional thinking is oriented toward concrete observable facts. The intensional meaning of the word “dog” is “a carnivorous mammal closely related to the gray wolf that has long been domesticated as a pet”, etc. The extensional meaning, by contrast, consists in all the dogs to which it refers, and can be indicated by actually pointing at some examples.

Suppose I say, “Dogs are dangerous.” That may be based on some real experience, but as a statement it is too crude. Which dogs? Under what conditions? Dangerous in what way? The dog in front of me now is not identical with the dog that bit me several years ago. If I forget that distinction, I may react to the label “dog”, to an abstract idea of “dogs are dangerous”, rather than to the real individual dog before me now.

General Semantics called this the principle of non-identity. No two things are completely identical. Even the “same” thing changes over time. A person today is not identical with that person yesterday. A situation now is not identical with a situation then. Anxiety and anger often blur those distinctions.

The Stoics would have recognized this problem immediately. Epictetus told his students that we are disturbed not by events themselves but by our opinions about them. He also taught them to pause when troubled by an impression and say something like: “You are just an impression, and not the thing you claim to represent.” The Stoics called this withholding assent. Modern therapists call similar processes cognitive distancing or cognitive defusion.

General Semantics offers another route to the same basic discipline. Do not immediately fuse with the first appearance of things. Do not assume the label captures the whole reality. Do not confuse the map with the territory.

How Veterans Used General Semantics

The veteran whose report I’m discussing had served in four South Pacific campaigns. He returned home tense, anxious, and constantly alert. He did not learn General Semantics from Kelley directly, but from classes taught by Professor Elwood Murray at the University of Denver. Korzybski later published the veteran’s report, with comments, because it provided such a vivid illustration of the method.

His fear of darkness was one example. He overcame it, at least in part, by walking at night while reminding himself that the darkness around him in Denver was not identical with the darkness of combat.

He also feared crowds. Eventually, he realized that slight movements among people downtown were being confused, by his nervous system, with movements in trees and bushes that might have signalled enemy danger in the jungle. So he deliberately exposed himself to crowds while practising this distinction. These movements, in Denver, were not those movements, in South pacific island jungles.

He reacted to war newsreels in cinemas as if the battle were happening again. So he forced himself to remain in his seat and remind himself that he was looking at black-and-white pictures on a screen, not actual combat. The image was not the event. The map was not the territory.

He heard fire-engine sirens and felt an urge to drop to the ground. So he visited a fire station and examined the sirens. He looked at them as they were now: part of civilian emergency vehicles, not air-raid warnings in a combat zone. These sirens were not those sirens.

He developed a strong aversion to rice because of a horrific memory involving a dead enemy soldier whose bag of rice had been torn open. So he ate rice again, while reminding himself that the rice on his plate was not identical with the rice he saw on that man’s corpse.

He disliked dogs because of what he had seen stray dogs devouring human corpses during the war. So he forced himself to pet dogs in America while remembering that these animals were not identical with the dogs he had seen on the islands.

The recurring method was simple enough but not easy. He repeatedly entered situations that triggered anxiety or aversion, and while doing so he trained himself to discriminate more accurately between present reality and traumatic memory. Modern therapists might describe this as a combination of exposure, reappraisal, and inhibitory learning. General Semantics described it as developing a more extensional orientation toward facts.

Hit the Semantic Pause Button

One of the most interesting parts of the report concerns anger. The veteran became irritated when civilians made what he regarded as silly remarks about the war. At first, he responded with cutting comments. Later, he became sullen and withdrawn. Eventually, though, he learned to use silence as a way of delaying his reaction and evaluating the situation more objectively.

This is a small but important point. A pause can become a form of training. Instead of immediately assenting to the first angry impression, he used the gap to consider the situation more carefully. Perhaps these civilians were not malicious. Perhaps they simply lacked the experience required to understand what war had been like. Perhaps his label “silly” captured something, but not the whole story.

This relates to another General Semantics concept: non-allness. No statement says everything. No label captures the whole person. No description exhausts the facts. When we are anxious or angry, however, we often behave as if our first description were complete.

He is selfish.

They are ignorant.

This is unbearable.

Nobody understands.

Everything is ruined.

These judgments may contain some truth, but they are usually incomplete. They leave things out selectively. And what they leave out may be precisely what we need to notice if we want to respond wisely.

That is especially relevant to anger. Anger often identifies a person with a single action, or a present disagreement with a whole history of injury. This person becomes that person. This remark becomes every insult. This inconvenience becomes intolerable disrespect. General Semantics, like Stoicism, asks us to slow down and inspect the impression before we endorse it.

Do This Simple Exercise

The practical lesson can be stated quite simply. When you notice anxiety or anger arising, especially when the reaction seems stronger than usual, slow down, pause, pay attention to what’s happening, and ask yourself:

• How am I labelling or evaluating this situation right now?

• How is this situation different from similar ones in the past?

• How might I be falling into the trap of selective thinking — is it the whole story?

• Would everyone else evaluate this situation in exactly the same way?

Focus on differences rather than similarities. You can then formulate the distinction in plain language:

• The thought is not the fact.

• The present is not the past.

• I am not the person I was in the past.

• This darkness is not that darkness.

This is not an effort to suppress emotion. The veteran in our story did not recover by telling himself he wasn’t allowed to feel afraid. He recovered by repeatedly confronting the things he feared and patiently training himself to perceive them as accurately as possible. His feelings were not denied but rather vague and imprecise habits of thinking were corrected and his emotions followed.

His example remains interesting historically. It shows that, before CBT even existed, military psychiatrists were already experimenting, on a large scale, with methods that look strikingly cognitive and behavioural. They were teaching individuals to face feared situations, distinguish appearance from reality, and challenge the overgeneralizations that keep their anxiety and anger alive.

Not the Same Person

According to the report, after several months the veteran’s family and associates noticed a marked improvement. He felt more confident, his physical tension had diminished, and he seemed more at ease. This is just a personal anecdote, of course, not a clinical trial. But it does illustrate a principle that appears again and again in ancient philosophy and modern psychotherapy.

• We suffer when our impressions become identified with reality.

• We suffer when our old maps are mistaken for the current terrain.

• We suffer when our words lead to sweeping generalizations.

The Stoics trained themselves to pause before assenting to their impressions. Korzybski taught people to introduce a “semantic pause” and remind themselves that the map is not the terrain. Modern therapy often teaches us to notice that thoughts are not facts. These are not identical doctrines, but they point in a very similar direction.

Many problems arise from when fear and anger blur the difference between past and present. The reaction is real, but not the whole story. The resemblance is real, but it is not identity.

And sometimes the most therapeutic thing we can say to ourselves is also the simplest:

This darkness is not that darkness.

Read the original in-depth article below…

Later today, 15th of June, at 12pm eastern time, I’ll be chatting with Massimo Pigliucci about skepticism and his forthcoming book How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic: The Power of Doubt in a Meaningful Life–Lessons from Cicero’s Philosophy.

Everyone is welcome. You’ll be able to join the live stream on Substack using this link, and a recording will be sent out afterwards.

View the Live Stream

In How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci reveals the way to a meaningful, happy life through the power of curiosity and doubt with the ancient Roman public advocate, orator, statesman, and thinker Marcus Tullius Cicero as his guide. Cicero lived in turbulent times at the end of the Roman Republic. Though he mostly lived as a Stoic, Cicero also followed Plato’s Skeptical Academy, believing a spirit of inquiry and an open-minded attitude were the secrets to living well.