ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that there is nothing particularly trustworthy about the words with which we consider our experience, and indeed that what we tell ourselves about our experience is more rather than less likely to serve the aims of self-deception. 'Anti-subjectivity' may make use of the fact that the possibilities for self-deception are infinite to suggest that the experience which underlies them is itself untrustworthy. The only acceptable form of objectivity is that which arises out of the overlapping of our individual subjectivities. In pursuing the painful process of undeception there is no doubt a sense in which self-knowledge becomes important, but this, again, is not the kind of self-knowledge which will be useful. Personal self-deception is likely to lead to confusion and anxiety upon which the individual can simply gain no purchase, and collective mythology is maintained at the expense of the gradual disintegration of the social world and the physical environment.
