In other words, rather than a narrative of connection, Minot has written a chronicle of self-deception in which the fellatio features more as a depressing end than as a beginning.
If you say the song is good, people accuse you of being a Stones apologist, of practicing a kind of self-deception in which you pretend that the band is still relevant.
Compounding the problems of low morale and poor leadership -- the Republican Guard was led by Saddam Hussein's youngest son, Qusay, a civilian with no military experience -- was a culture of self-deception in which soldiers and officers consistently lied to one another about everything from the condition of their equipment to the presence of U.S. forces inside Baghdad.
The ensuing internal struggle to free yourself from the grip of the ego will submerge you in many self-deceptions in which you will firmly believe you are progressing toward the spiritual mountain top; but many of your practices and behavior on close examination will reveal the ego in disguise and control.
She didn't want to see the pathos of bigness of character trapped in a web of self-deception, for which it took a pair of megawatt stars; the result is, in part, May's acerbic view of stardom in particular and life as a whole.
From the get-go, she taunts the mixed motives and self-deceptions with which the Communards arrive in Utopia.
He tried to summon the calculated self-deceptions with which he sometimes cheered himself, but he was left without any energy for hope or self-deception.
In particular, Johnson emphasises "the helpless vulnerability of the individual before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray".
Building an evolutionary theory of deception necessitates not only examples of self-deception - which seem to run deep in our evolutionary waters, as evidenced by the extensive deceit and self-deception involved in cuckoo hatchling care by self-deceived foster parents and overconfident chimpanzee warfare - but a compelling case for selection for such a costly enterprise.
For me it's a kind of essay in aloneness – and an essay on self-deception, too, which Krapp is well aware of.
Some of the best passages in "Self's Deception" are those in which Self is simply enjoying a meal or his idea of a pick-me-up, a sambuca downed while chewing coffee beans, followed by a cigarette that pleasurably stings.
