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What is going on here, Wegner argues, is a malfunctioning of the uniquely human capacity for metacognition, or thinking about thinking. ‘Metacognition’, Wegner explains, ‘occurs when thought takes itself as an object.’ Mainly, it’s an extremely useful skill: it is what enables us to recognise when we are being unreasonable, or sliding into depression, or being afflicted by anxiety, and then to do something about it. But when we use metacognitive thoughts directly to try to control our other, everyday, ‘object-level’ thoughts – by suppressing images of white bears, say, or replacing gloomy
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