Until you are able to disappoint your ideal self, you cannot become a real one. This essay centres on that premise. Horney’s insight that “nobody divided within himself can be wholly sincere ” is crucial in understanding that inner division undermines our notions of individual sincerity and responsibility. The solution cannot be achieved through sheer willpower alone, so we need Moore’s notion of a sufficient concept of the Self that can truly contain our multitudes  to bridge this gap. It is in risking disappointing – temporarily - our ideal self, that we begin a process of initiation towards the Self; aligning ourselves not to simply a higher (ego-constructed ideal self) but the highest (Self).

To risk disappointment is one aspect of taking responsibility for one’s life. Responsibility requires a self that can contain competing ideals, drives, and tendencies. Therefore, responsibility is less concerned with outer action as it is with inner coherence. Without deeper recognition of these contradictory impulses, we will toward a more reactive lifestyle, not intentional. One part towards reading, another away from socialising, a third against political opinions . Before acting, one is already split. Without careful attention, one’s life will be lived by default in the form of constant management of competing a priori  impulses. What is needed is a perceptual shift and re-alignment to the highest ideal (Self) as opposed to simply the opportunistic higher option. It is the lack of a strong enough connection to the Self which can hold our multiplicity that is the problem, not division.

To take responsibility for one’s actions requires acknowledging the fractured motivations behind each, which causes the ego considerable frustration. A divided person cannot take a genuine stand because there is no coherent unified “I” to take that stand from. It is less that we avoid responsibility due to outer difficulties, and more that we cannot stand the piercing nowhere-to-hide light that reveals our inner division, our naked vulnerability.  The ego faces humiliation and partial dissolution, so false pretences must be adopted, and desperate re-frames constructed to make sense of the situation. A pretence begins as a survival strategy but becomes unconsciously habitual. Taking responsibility, then, begins with uprooting our false pretences  and acknowledging the fractured premises on which they are built, i.e. risking short term disappointment to rebuild on firmer ground.

Ownership requires a stable centre on which to act; this ground cannot be ‘grey’. In one’s personal life, that may simply be recognition of the roles that we are performing (personae) and the resultant psychic baggage that accompanies them (shadow). Disappointment of the ideal self, then, can be a practical task and needn’t be shrouded in mystery. The ‘grey’ of life needs first to be filtered into ‘white’ or ‘black’. Just as a painter wouldn’t stack five coloured paints vertically, neither should we vertically stack our experiences. A simple vertical to horizontal shift will separate the paints into clearly distinguished colours that can be worked with functionally. The painter first separates his palette in order to integrate on the canvas; we must first separate the aspects of our inner life to take meaningful responsibility on the canvas that is our life.

The painter needs a palette to make sense of – to hold and contain – his paints, lest they become a monolithic unusable brown. Similarly, we must establish an inner psychic palette to hold and contain the whites of our personae and the blacks of our shadows, lest we live a monolithic grey life. The palette is a binding force to contain our tools. Though we may celebrate the artist (subject) or his masterpiece (object) we need to give respect to the invisible ‘hands’ that allow this to happen (the palette). Likewise, we should not focus on any particular man or his achievements but celebrate his inner organising system.

For Moore, this is the celebration of the alignment of the ego with the Self. The painter-ego can only be celebrated if his palette can contain his paints. If his palette can hold only three paints when he desires five, his future options are clear, so long as he can accept this limitation. This limitation needn’t mean he abandons his masterpiece, only his prior expectations of what that specific masterpiece should be. So it is with the ideal self; we must live a real life with a real self, not abandon the project of life altogether due to limitations. The illusory ‘ideal self’, built upon false pretences, must be dissolved into something more substantial, the real self.

In conclusion, a re-organisation is required; a collapsing of the illusory idealised image. We must risk disappointing this illusion so that we can re-establish firmer ground on which to act. Life’s vertical greys must be sorted into horizontal whites and blacks; the resultant creation may still be grey in its output, but it is of a fundamentally different sort. This risks disturbing the peace, but it was only tension masquerading as peace upon closer inspection. In sum, the fantasy must give way to the reality.