Self-criticism

The presence of self-criticism is considered a condition of the individual’s mental health; a low level of self-criticism entails an inadequately high self-esteem . However, excessive self-criticism can be seen as a sign of ill health. According to the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (essay “Against Self-criticism” ^[1] ), excessive self-criticism arises from ambivalence . Some approaches to psychotherapy, for example, Aaron Beck 's cognitive psychotherapy includes measures aimed at reducing the level of self-criticism and self-incrimination ^[2] .

The basis of self-critical judgments is the person’s internal convictions, due to his values, principles, and even goals. Only when a person looks at himself through their prism can one speak of self-criticism, since if he compares himself with the belief system of someone else, he is dependent and inadequately evaluates his own personality.

The concept of self-criticism played a significant role in the works of the founders of Marxism, and especially in the theory and practice of some of their followers, especially in Marxism-Leninism and in Maoism . The apology of self-criticism is noted as an important and unchanging feature of Soviet ideology. In 1927, at the Fifteenth Congress of the CPSU (b), the slogan about self-criticism was declared "one of the central slogans of the day", in 1928, Stalin's article "Against the vulgarization of the slogan of self-criticism" was published, declaring self-criticism "an integral and permanent weapon in the arsenal of Bolshevism, inextricably linked with the very nature of Bolshevism, with its revolutionary spirit. ” The article entered the canon of the most quoted Stalinist statements and became doctrinal. From that time until the end of the power of the Communist Party, discussions about the necessity of self-criticism and the peculiarities of communist self-criticism have been one of the constant themes of party agitators. Most actively propagated in the 1940s, the idea of ​​“criticism and self-criticism” was seen as a new contribution to the theory of Marxism-Leninism, “a new type of movement, a new type of development, a new dialectical regularity”, was presented as a “special form of disclosing and overcoming the contradictions of the socialist society. " The concept of self-criticism in the Soviet sense expanded from self-criticism of a person to self-criticism of an organization; thus, criticism of superiors by grassroots executives was seen as “self-criticism from below,” criticism in the opposite direction as “self-criticism from above,” the absence of allegations of shortcomings in the organization’s work could be regarded as a “clip of self-criticism.” A parallel can be drawn between the Soviet understanding of self-criticism and the practice of Christian repentance , with the difference that Soviet self-criticism assumed as the addressee the party and the concrete people representing it at the moment. Spread even during the inner-party struggle of the 1920s, repentant speeches later took shape in a kind of “ritual of self-criticism”. The discussions in various fields of science, with their ritualism, which were held in the forties and fifties under the slogan of “criticism and self-criticism”, are compared by some researchers with the trial of Galileo . ^{[3] [4] [5] [6] [7]}

• Repentance
• Confession