The illusory ego?
17 March 2026
Strengthening the ego of our client might seem like a noble aim — but what if the ego is illusory?
This is a question posed by both Buddhism and, in contemporary times, by Lacanian psychotherapy.
Buddhism holds that the 'self' has no independent existence outside our ever-changing perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions. There is no-one having thoughts and feelings — just the thoughts and feelings themselves. If this seems improbable, try making a statement
about your 'self' without any reference to your thoughts, feelings, or actions. It's surprisingly difficult.
Gilbert Ryle called this kind of confusion a 'category mistake' — like visiting a university, seeing the lecture halls, faculty offices and seminar rooms, and then asking: "yes, but where is the University?"
In similar fashion, the Lacanian view holds that the ego is the convenient and necessary fiction we construct once we have entered language — the story we tell about who we are, the concept we wrap around our subjectivity, consolidated in what Lacan called 'the mirror stage.'
There is no 'true self' waiting to be
actualised. Strengthening the ego, from this perspective, is not therapeutic progress — it's compounding an illusion. And yet the illusion has costs: it keeps us anchored to a fixed version of ourselves, resistant to the very change we seek in the consulting room.
This is why Buddhism and psychoanalysis are more congruent than they might first appear — and why this is all far more optimistic than it sounds. If there is no ultimate, fixed self, then change is not just possible but inherent. We are not repairing something broken. We are loosening our grip on a story that was never quite true — and discovering what becomes possible when we can bear to live without it.