The Mentality of Conviction: Feeling Certain and the Search for Truth

Abstract

Abstract Certainty is neither an empirical finding nor a logical conclusion, but an absolute state of mind—a state of mind that does not tolerate the complexity either of empirical investigation or of conceptual analysis. That is why I will speak of the feeling of certainty. We believe in it; through it our experience becomes evidence. Typically our convictions are so far inside our sense of empirical reality that they seem to come directly from it. And while that confusion of certainty with perceived reality can be productive, as persistence in science and mathematics, its unconscious aim is to unburden the individual or group of doubt by projection, which further obscures evidence, whether of the senses or reason. Psychoanalysis can contribute to understanding the individual construction of certainty, through working with the transference that is alive in the psychoanalytic process. But it can also study social processes that create the reassurance of certainty. T he process with which I am concerned is projection. For Freud, projection established the difference between internal and external domains, and, therefore, a relationship between external, perceived reality and internal, phantasied reality. In my view, it does the same for the social as for in the individual worlds, and with the same two consequences: it can support experimentation with the external world or a delusion of the nature of the external world, as in the delusion of race and the prejudices that follow from it. References Arendt, H. (1978). The life of the mind. New York: Harcourt. Google Scholar Bion, W. (1957/1967). On arrogance. In Second thoughts: Selected papers on psycho-analysis (pp. 86–92). London: Heinemann. Google Scholar Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups and other papers. London: Tavistock. CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bion, W. R. (1962a). Learning from experience. London: Heinemann. Reprint Karnac, 1982. Google Scholar Bion, W. R. (1962b). 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