When we are criticised, we usually snap into a spluttering defensiveness, which we would find ludicrous if we heard it from others. We can remind ourselves of how easily we can identify negative patterns in other people (‘he’s pretty arrogant, he talks too much, she tends to put other people down’) but when such criticisms come our way, we object to the generalisation and insist on being given individual examples, each of which we can then explain away: ‘When do I do that? Tell me one instance where I did that! Right, well, that was because …’ The fury of Seneca’s driving demon has us believe
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