From the sun-drenched agoras of ancient Athens to the neon-lit screens of our digital devices, humanity’s relation with truth remains a negotiation threaded through two spheres: the annals of public social history and the private particulars of the subjective psyche. The ancient Greeks, with their spirited debates and thirst for wisdom, bequeathed us the concept of ‘Aletheia’, an unveiling or disclosure of truth. This bequest continues to shape modern inquiries into the complex nature of truth. I want to propose that truth exists as both a process and a destination—it is continually sought after through the public and private spheres, while also serving as an anchoring force.
The European Enlightenment, with its luminous trust in reason and empiricism, heralded an era where correspondence theories took hold. These theories held that truth corresponds to observable facts and objective reality. In contrast, coherence theories gained prominence after the nineteenth century, arguing that truth aligns with internal consistency of beliefs rather than external factors. As we will explore, elements of both correspondence and coherence are required for a comprehensive understanding of truth across the spheres of public and private life.
In this essay, I want to inquire into the relation between public and private truth by drawing together schools of philosophy, the psychoanalytic process, and the impact of advanced digital technology. The therapeutic journey, like society’s broader truth-seeking, reveals how we negotiate between empirical reality and subjective experience. Likewise, the digital age demands similar discernment between ‘facts’ grounded in evidence versus distorted misinformation or disinformation. By examining truth through these different lenses, I argue that truth remains an enduring anchor point amidst the ups and downs of knowledge’s contingent progress.
Psychoanalysis seeks to illuminate the unconscious forces and childhood conflicts that shape personality. Classical psychoanalysis employs free association, dream analysis, and transference neuroses interpretations to access repressed aspects of the psyche. However, relational psychoanalysis focuses more on interpersonal patterns, that is, subject-object relations, than internal drives.
In classical Freudian theory, the analyst adopts a detached stance as an ‘impartial mirror’ reflecting unconscious material that arises through the client’s free associations. The analyst interprets the client’s transference neuroses—their projection of early childhood emotions onto the therapist—to gain insights into their unconscious mind. For instance, an erotic transference may reveal Oedipal conflicts. The goal is to increase the client’s insight and loosen the grip of the pleasure-driven id over the reality-seeking ego.
Relational psychoanalysis moves beyond classical drive theory to view the therapeutic relationship itself as a vehicle for uncovering truth. The therapist participates more actively in the relationship, disclosing their own reactions and vulnerable experiences when appropriate. Relational therapists see transference as a mutual process, shaped by both parties’ subjectivities.
Relational theory also reinterprets defence mechanisms like repression. Rather than intrapsychic defences against forbidden id impulses, repression can represent the silencing of one’s true interpsychic self in childhood to maintain harmony. Therapy provides a new relational space where clients may practice, or risk, authentic being. By giving articulation to buried emotions or needs in the presence of an attuned other, clients are encouraged to develop a stronger sense of selfhood.
Both classical and relational psychoanalysis may employ tools like free association, dreamwork and transference interpretation to access unconscious truths. However, classical psychoanalysis sees truth as rooted in libidinal and death instincts, whereas relational therapy views truth as an emergent property of mutual human relatedness. Relational theory’s intersubjective approach aligns with coherence notions of truth—clients reconstruct their identities and choose their self-narratives through the process of the therapeutic relationship. However, empirical observations and ethical considerations prevent therapists from unconditionally validating clients’ inner realities. In this sense, correspondence theories may also act to give therapy limits or boundaries.
Psychoanalysis in its many guises exemplifies the negotiative process between public and private spheres of truth. Therapists respect the client’s subjective realities while also introducing verifying observations, interpretations, and ethical boundaries. Through experience and artful balance, clients come to integrate coherence and correspondence, developing self-understanding, self-awareness, and relating authentically. In the words of psychoanalyst Hans Loewald (1979), truth emerges in therapy ‘like an ever-changing horizon as we move through a landscape.’
The internet and social media have profoundly shaped how we produce, access, and spread truth. These technologies can either enhance or inhibit our ability to discern factual reality from fiction. We must navigate carefully to harness their potential while minimising harm.
On the positive side, the internet enables unprecedented access to information, expanding our horizons of knowledge. Search engines like Google provide a portal to instantly look up facts, statistics, images, and research studies that can verify or debunk claims. The rise of citizen journalism and personal broadcasting channels like YouTube and Twitter allow more decentralised, democratic sharing of perspectives and eyewitness reporting.
Social media also fosters connections between remote or marginalised groups, giving voice to suppressed narratives. Hashtag activism campaigns have spotlighted injustices and mainstream media biases. Reddit forums have exposed abuses of power and catalysed social movements like the WallStreetBets phenomenon. The anonymity of online spaces creates opportunities for whistle-blowers to speak controversial truths without fear of retaliation.
That being so, the openness and speed of digital networks also allows misinformation to spread rapidly without adequate verification. A MIT study published in the journal Science found false news stories on Twitter reached over one-hundred million users, spreading six times faster than true stories (Vosoughi et al., 2018). Algorithms that maximize engagement have amplified fake news, conspiracy theories, and political propaganda. Manipulated images and AI-generated deepfakes can falsely depict events that never happened.
This type of content curation occurs quietly, which is to say, without transparency. Social media echo chambers and confirmation bias create reinforcement loops that confirm our existing beliefs and make us resistant to factual correction (Tucker et al., 2018). Online anonymity also permits malicious actors to deceive without accountability. As truth fragments across disparate networks, establishing shared reality becomes increasingly difficult.
Thus, while expanding access to knowledge, technology also enables warp speed distortion of truth. As with therapy’s balancing act, society must thoughtfully integrate openness to divergent narratives with responsible verification. Media literacy education can teach critical thinking and fact-checking skills. Independent watchdog groups can assess content accuracy. Whistle-blower protection and diversity of technology companies may improve oversight and transparency. With vigilance, technology can illuminate truth rather than obscure it.
Navigating the currents of competing knowledge requires a comprehensive understanding of truth—one that integrates both coherence and correspondence theories. Neither perspective alone fully encapsulates truth’s multifaceted nature across private and public realms.
Coherence frames truth as a subjective, internal harmony of beliefs that provide meaning and identity. A narrative is deemed true if it fits consistently within our ‘semantic web’ of existing interpretations or adaptations. In this narrow sense coherence aligns with therapy’s remit of integrating dissociated self-aspects into a unified sense of self through a process of meaning-making.
However, coherence risks solipsistic relativism without external constraints. As Bertrand Russell (1948) quipped, ‘coherence may be merely the coherence of madness.’ Imaginary systems like delusions or hallucinations or conspiracy theories may achieve internal coherence through elaborate rationalisation, while utterly failing to correspond with the facts also at hand. Therapists thus integrate reality-testing to avoid affirming dangerous distortions.
Strong correspondence theories argue beliefs should correspond to perception-independent facts and empirical evidence to qualify as true—but who would be there to observe such a thing should one exist? Science relies on corroborated observations, experimental replication, and falsification of incorrect hypotheses. Likewise, therapists may introduce verifying questions and behavioural experiments to test the validity of a client’s thought patterns.
But pure correspondence risks reductionism or jejune oversimplicity, unable to account for profound subjective realities. An indigenous tribe’s spiritual beliefs may not empirically correspond to a scientist’s facts, yet still represent a coherent symbolic system. Therapists understand that even severe distortions may be true from the client’s lens. Integrating multiple cultural perspectives is therefore necessary and essential.
Thus, truth is perhaps less a binary-opposition and more a dialectical tension. Collective progress requires integrating rigorous verification with openness to diverse coherence narratives. We should tread carefully between formulating overarching objective descriptions while avoiding totalising metanarratives that may erase marginal voices. Holding paradoxical truths in balance is an important skill for the therapist.
The ongoing negotiation between public and private thus calls for fluency in both correspondence and coherence. For truth, the pathway itself appears to be the destination. Not an endpoint we definitively reach, but a continual process of cultivating public knowledge while making space for private meaning-making.
As we navigate truth’s winding path across diverse landscapes, what timeless stars might guide our voyages? What skills must we cultivate as discerning explorers? I will share a few thoughts on these questions.
Cultivating discernment is essential in an age of information overload. We must hone an empirical sensibility to verify sources and critically evaluate claims, rather than passively absorbing narratives. Ancient philosophers valued the dialectic discourse—reasoned dialogue examining a question from all angles. This spirit of polite scrutiny remains relevant, helping distinguish reality from distortion.
Even so, one should perhaps balance scepticism with openness. Seeking truth requires humility and a certain comfort with discomfort, comfort with uncertainty. When one shies away from nuance to grasp at absolutist certainty, whether totalising dogma or relativistic arbitrariness, one loses sight of truth, or one loses sight of what truth may have to offer, or one gains some insight. Skilled therapists learn to appreciate that listening without displays of judgement allows truth-bearing to emerge organically.
Integrating multiple valid perspectives into a formulation is also critical to success. Truth is not a monolith we discover but an ongoing dynamic process of synthesising diverse information into temporary knowledge—that is, hypotheses. We must tread judiciously mind, neither descending too far into relativism nor imposing inauthentic consensus. Sit with the paradoxical, it will pass.
As therapists guide clients to align their beliefs with empirical reality while also honouring private meaning, we too should learn to navigate the shifting horizons between coherence and correspondence theories of truth. With good faith, wisdom, and discernment, perhaps we may yet chart a course out of selfishness or ignorance?
Of course, truth’s indefinability should be clear by now—truth as such remains more of a guiding star than a fixed destination. It is not something one grasps, rather it is something to be pursued perpetually throughout and across lived experience. Much like the therapeutic journey, our shared quest for truth is an odyssey, a worthwhile odyssey, but an odyssey, nonetheless. It is something we all navigate together, living, or dead, each wished to balance perspective with evidence, meaning with facts.
By cultivating discernment and openness with emotional knowledge and good faith, perhaps we may chart a course through stormy straits toward safe harbours for truth’s appreciation. With truth as a formidable compass, alignment with ourselves and advanced machine learning becomes possible across both the exterior continents of public knowledge and interior landscapes of the psyche. The path of truth evolves, can we?
Reflections from a therapy room 
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