It seems such an anodyne question, doesn’t it?
Who are you?
It’s a question all of us have been asked at some point in our lives and to which there are many different answers. We can answer with reference to family or friends, nationality, profession, job title, leisure activity, personality trait or even a possession, but always according to the context; we wouldn’t dream of giving the same response to a new work colleague as to a new acquaintance at a beer-fuelled party. For many people, the question stops there.
However, the history of ideas shows that identity has been the subject of many theories and the self has been called many names since ancient times: Plato held the soul to be one’s immortal unchanging essence; David Hume thought it was the sum of all our perceptions; Carl Jung considered the self was the result of the unified conscious and unconscious minds, a sign of psychic wholeness; while Donald Winnicott, the highly influential psychologist and paediatrician, conceived a difference between the true self and false selves, with the latter created to adapt to relationships and situations in which the true self’s needs are not met, such as the child who puts on a tough exterior to hide an unfulfillable longing for affection. Since Winnicott’s work, the true self has become a key research area among psychologists, who broadly agree that it’s built on a moral foundation.
Through my academic career and reading in psychology I’ve found Jung’s map of the psyche to be a most useful guide along the path to fulfilment, though not to the point of excluding the best insights of other thinkers. Our unconscious, both personal and collective, plays such a key role in generating our thoughts and behaviour – not to mention its undoubted capacity to derail our best conscious desires – that we need to become aware of them, and what they hide, and then learn to work with them, if we want to find fulfilment as our true self.
Expressing our true self, being authentic, requires us to be self-aware, courageous and honest. We all know the cautionary tales of people who acquire fame and fortune and change their way of life, only to see their lives fall apart, or the trail of (self) destruction that often accompanies people who sacrifice their nobler values in order to reach their ends. It can be like watching a car crash in slow motion – you know how it’s going to end, and it won’t be pretty.
Becoming oneself is tough, it’s the work of a lifetime, but don’t tell me it’s not worth it.