Millions of English speakers, I imagine, have made that offer at one time or another. Sometimes the person on the receiving end isn’t thinking at all. They’re just parked in neutral. They blink and say, “Oh, no … keep your penny; I’ve got nothing.” That seems plausible enough to me. I often find that my brain is uncommitted and humming idly. But I think you’ll agree, it would be quite a stretch to assert that many of us are brain-parked for most of our waking lives! That is exactly what’s claimed in some of my recent readings.
Just to be clear, this wasn’t an assertion that many spend their lives in a zombie-like trance. I don’t know anyone of that opinion, entertaining though it is. Rather, the assertion was that many of us have never developed an awareness of an inner monolog.
That idea had never crossed my mind. I’ve always assumed that everyone engaged in “self-talk.” It’s a reflex, I thought — like breathing. I was fascinated. I wondered how common it was to live with a quiet mind. And how do people with this affliction navigate life’s gauntlet without the power of reason? (Isn’t that what self-talk amounts to?) I wanted research — toot sweet.
One of the articles was a great letdown. After making the bold claim that self-talk was not universal, it backpedaled. It was as though the writer had, in mid-paragraph, imagined a mob of angry readers ready to lynch him. Psychologists were called forth to give contrary testimony. They explained that self-talk was indeed universal. It was just that many forms of it weren’t recognized as such.
For example, one psychologist explained that all memory was self-talk, as in going to the store and remembering what groceries to buy. So if Bert recalls Marge’s instructions to pick up a head of lettuce, a 6-pack of Bud, and several rolls of toilet paper, that’s somehow an inner monolog. Hardly. That’s simply an inert thought. But what if Bert had thought this: Marge wants even more toilet paper? When we have jumbo packs of it in the garage? My God, I married a hoarder. That’s genuine self-talk; it’s reflective. The tipoff is the interrogative pieces. A question puts the mind to work. Whenever you ask someone, “Why?” the mind snaps to attention; it notices a challenge has been flung.
The grandest form of self-talk is when it is externalized as a soliloquy. It would be amusing to hear Bert soliloquize about the state of his marriage, but that would amount to nothing alongside Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide or the bitter confession that begins Richard III. I wonder what people with quiet minds make of these performances. Perhaps they think Shakespeare has shown us madmen who speechify in solitude just for dramatic effect.
Another psychologist held that sharing one’s thoughts with others was self-talk. At most, that’s merely a recitation of prior self-talk, not a second instance of it. Again, it’s simply memory at work. But suppose you say something like, “Damn it, Jim, the Lakers lost again! They never win when I have tickets to a game.” That’s verbalizing something that might never have had a self-talk antecedent.
Visualizations, visceral sensations, and flares of emotion are also mistaken instances of self-talk. Our laws contradict the psychologists who think they are. If these behaviors lead to a homicide, it’s a case of second-degree murder, a “crime of passion.” First-degree murder is “premeditated,” the sole domain of self-talkers.
Happily, there are self-talkers of various stripes who live constructively. Psychotherapists, for example. I’ve personally witnessed their skill at getting clients to verbalize their thoughts. The onus of thinking about thinking becomes the client’s principal task. The success of the therapy is directly connected to breakthroughs in self-talk.
Actors are another group of self-talk experts. The best ones have a genius for probing the mechanics of people’s minds, even those who exist only in fiction. In doing so, an actor is said to “inhabit” another personality. I think this can only be done by first inhabiting a person’s self-talk, truly a miracle of empathy.
That brings us to writers. Their craft is essentially a focused application of self-talk. Only consider that self-editing is the better part of writing, and self-editing requires a perceptive and persistent inner critic, a self-talker. Have you ever wondered why school kids have so much difficulty writing a simple narrative or essay? They probably haven’t grown an inner critic and may never grow one. The main task of composition teachers is to elicit this voice. Strange though it sounds, the objective of a composition teacher and a psychotherapist is much the same.
I hypothesize that if self-talk appears, it does so at about the same time as the ability to reason, say, around the age of 7. If it doesn’t appear, why not? What would thwart its emergence? By 7, children have tried out dozens of behaviors, acceptable and unacceptable. They have blurted out dozens of thoughts, charming and rude. Adults react accordingly, and children begin to understand the value of censorship. They may make friends with it and come to regard the inner voice as risky or even dangerous. If so, the question flips — why wouldn’t every child choose censorship? That calls for more speculation. What if the dearest adults react to a child’s experimentation with reproaches that wound the tender ego? Perhaps it recoils and cries, “Hey, I’m innocent! I want an advocate, a mouthpiece, someone to plead my case,” and proceeds to generate an interior voice.
The decisive paths taken in developing brains can only be guessed at. We’ll have to wait for the distant day when research at last reveals the wellsprings of consciousness.
The Scratching Post 