Self-deception occupies a structurally central position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a symptom, a defense mechanism, and a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between consciousness and truth. Trungpa’s Buddhist-inflected analysis treats self-deception as nothing less than the operative mechanism of ego itself—the ‘self-perpetuating, self-maintaining structure’ by which the ego refuses to relinquish its dream of attainment, substituting comfort and self-validation for genuine openness. Horney approaches the same territory from a psychoanalytic direction, documenting the neurotic’s systematic befogment of issues, the disavowal of the real self, and the elaborate camouflage by which alienation from self is rendered invisible even to the sufferer. Fromm traces self-deception into the social domain, showing how pseudo-reasons and rationalization manufacture the illusion of autonomous opinion where only borrowed authority exists. Kurtz and Ketcham situate self-deception within spiritual traditions, observing that sages and saints were distinguished precisely by their recognition of how difficult self-knowledge is to attain. Pargament extends the analysis to religious motivation, noting that self-deception may be more common than deliberate fraud in the domain of religious conduct. Shaw, writing from an addiction-and-faith perspective, dissents from the consensus, arguing that what is often labeled self-deception is better understood as willful unwillingness. Across these voices, the central tension is whether self-deception is primarily a cognitive failure, a defensive psychological structure, or a moral condition—and whether it can be dismantled through insight, practice, or grace.