Concept
The divided self
The divided self is Haidt's summary of a finding that runs through psychology: a person is several partly independent systems, conscious and automatic, that often disagree, so wanting two things at once, or knowing what to do and not doing it, is the normal architecture rather than a defect.
Haidt collects four divisions the research keeps finding: mind against body, left brain against right, new cortex against old emotional brain, and controlled against automatic processing. The last is the one that matters for daily life and becomes the rider and the elephant. Its consequence is that many familiar frustrations, the diet abandoned at night, the resolution that lasts a week, the argument you regret while still having it, are not evidence of a weak character but of two systems with different timescales and different wants. Understanding the division changes the strategy: not to win the argument with yourself, which the conscious side usually loses, but to arrange things so the automatic side is pointed the right way, and to widen the space, as Frankl would say, between what the automatic side wants and what you do.
A real-life example
A nurse in Izmir is baffled that she can plan a calm conversation with her manager on the bus and shout within a minute of arriving. Seeing the two systems, she stops planning the words and instead plans the pause: a breath and a named feeling before the first sentence.
How to use it
- 1Expect to want two things at once; it is the architecture, not a flaw.
- 2Plan for the automatic side's timescale, which is seconds, not the conscious side's, which is days.
- 3Aim to widen the space between the automatic want and the act, rather than to eliminate the want.