[1] A concept similar in many ways to the Freudian superego as inhibiting censor,[2] or the Jungian active imagination,[3] the inner critic is usually experienced as an inner voice attacking a person, saying that they are bad, wrong, inadequate, worthless, guilty, and so on.
[7] Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss have labeled seven types of inner critics—the perfectionist, the taskmaster, the inner controller, the guilt tripper, the destroyer, the underminer, and the molder.
[8] A number of self-help books deal with the inner critic, though some use other terms to denote it, such as "the judge" or "the gremlin".
[17] Robert W. Firestone and Lisa Firestone, in their book Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice,[10] discuss how the inner voice often seems to protect a person from being hurt or feeling abandoned when in reality it reinforces feelings of shame and guilt, sabotages intimate relationships, and leads to self-destructive behaviors.
Their book presents a method for externalizing the critical inner voice in order to turn self-criticisms into statements that can be evaluated objectively.