The internal conversation of ‘autonomous reflexives’ is precisely that. It is the lone exercise of a mental activity, which its practitioners recognise as being an internal dialogue with themselves and one which they do not need and do not want to be supplemented by external exchanges with other people. In other words, the life of their minds is a private domain, because to these subjects their inner deliberations are self-sufficient. ‘Autonomous reflexives’ are people who would subscribe to the view that ‘no one can know my own mind as well as I do myself.’ Only they can know exactly what they value, only they can define which projects constitute the pursuit of the worthwhile, and only they can design the life practices which embody such goals and then monitor them to establish whether or not these are ones with which they are able to live.

This self-sufficiency might easily be taken for, but is not, arrogance. ‘Autonomous reflexives’ acknowledge their personal limitations as readily as does anyone, but they define them in a distinctively technical manner. They will agree that they have many areas of sheer ignorance and they willingly seek those with the requisite expertise – be it in plumbing, dentistry, or information technology. These are all matters of specialist qualifications and relatively impersonal services. Conversely, as far as their inner lives are concerned, ‘autonomous reflexives’ take responsibility for themselves and for the conclusions drawn from their own interior deliberations.