Self-knowledge

An important distinction between psychologizing and traditional self-knowledge:

To us, the phrase “self-knowledge” means little more than “psychologizing” about ourselves; that is, obtaining emotionally stimulating opinions about ourselves, against the background of the view of human nature insinuated into us by our own abnormal social order.

Or it means conceptual analysis, which cannot penetrate into our emotions and body because the faculty of thinking itself is encapsulated within us.  Thoughts about myself have no penetrating action upon the emotions and instincts.

Socratic self-knowledge is self-attention, which is a force that can exist and act with tremendous power within ourselves. For Socrates, it develops and grows in relationship to the various functions of the whole human structure, in the midst of the “citizens of Athens,” in “the marketplace.”

- Jacob Needleman, The Heart of Philosophy