Friday’s Food for Thought: The Concept of “Identity”

Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post. We hope everyone had a productive work week and are ready for a restful weekend. For this week’s post we take a look at the concept of “identity” from a psychological perspective. We all know that identity theft goes much deeper than raiding someone’s bank account. It is a violation of the victim’s concept of self. So, what is the concept of identity and self really all about? Well, we try our best to answer this question in this week’s post. We hope you enjoy.

Definition of “Self Concept” and Identity
Self-concept is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual’s perception of “self” in relation to any number of characteristics, such as academics, gender roles and sexuality, racial identity, and many others. The self-concept is composed of relatively permanent self-assessments,[citation needed] such as personality attributes, knowledge of one’s skills and abilities, one’s occupation and hobbies, and awareness of one’s physical attributes. For example, the statement, “I am lazy” is a self-assessment that contributes to the self-concept. In contrast, the statement “I am tired” would not normally be considered part of someone’s self-concept, since being tired is a temporary state. Nevertheless, a person’s self-concept may change with time, possibly going through turbulent periods of identity crisis and reassessment. Interesting, huh? Read more from Wikipedia here.

Carl Jung and His Ideas on Self
Carl Jung’s entire work could be said to rest on two questions, “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” The depth of his work and his investigation into these questions is I think, unsurpassed in the Western World. Had he been born at a different time we would I believe now have the religion of Jung, and yet that would probably go against his own thinking. He recognised the danger of dogmas, the limitations on how far we can rationally answer some questions and he fiercely defended truth, knowing that truth is what you and I discover from our hearts and experience to be the truth, not merely some dry rationalisation that comes from our “head.” Read more here.

Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD): Having More Than One Identity
The French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, taught that all desire is the “desire of the Other.” In plain language, this means that most of our unconscious life Jacques Lacan is a product of a variety of external social influences. The concept of personality, therefore, although a common term in psychology, really doesn’t mean much because any person is really composed of many diverse, fragmentary—and generally illusory—images of “self.” In the midst of such chaos, psychology can’t heal a personality so much as help a person recognize all these illusions. These normal fragments of personality are often called ego states, a term derived from the clinical hypnosis work of John & Helen Watkins. In contrast, Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) is an abnormal condition in which the personality becomes so fragmented that the various parts cannot even communicate with each other. Read more about MPD here.

How to Get to Know Someone
A critical part of developing our identities is forming relationships with others. And, no one said making friends was easy, but follow this simple guide and, before you know it, you could bloom into a social butterfly. Getting to know someone is the first step and this will help you achieve your goals. Check out this WikiHow post on how to enhance your social skills and make more friends.

Happy Friday!