Prosopopoeia

The Stoic practice of personifying one's own reason as an independent inner counterpart and engaging it in an internal dialogue.

Prosopopoeia is a technique borrowed from rhetoric that the Stoics turned inward: rather than giving voice to the gods or the homeland, they allowed reason (Logos) itself to speak. They treated their own rational faculty (Hegemonikon) not as an echo of the conscious self, but as an independent inner authority that asks questions and supplies uncomfortable answers. Marcus Aurelius practiced this daily in his Meditations, addressing himself in the second person and thereby activating an inner counselor.