All: Are there aspects of self-concept or identity that are unchangeable?

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[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Humans change enormously over our life spans. With those changes come lots of changes in how we think and feel about ourselves. But certain core facts about ourselves that most of us accept as true - such as our sex, place of birth, DOB, parentage, ethnicity and so on - are unchangeable. However, the extent to which individuals care about & focus on these unchangeable factors can & usually does vary greatly at different points & situations in our lives.

At the same time, many people find it challenging to integrate the reality of the various new roles we take on over the course of our lives. And coming to terms with our changing bodies and physical limitations as we age, experience illness and go through natural processes - such as pregnancy, maternity & menopause on the female side and premature balding and paunchiness on the male side - is hard for many people.

On the larger issue, I want to add a word of caution about confusing the term self-concept with identity, particularly in the way identity is used today.

A person's self-concept or self-image is the assemblage of all the beliefs and feelings each one of us has about ourselves in our heads and hearts and which we believe to be true of ourselves.

Used to be, we said the self-concept or self-image was "the reputation you have with yourself."

Some of the beliefs in our self-concepts are fact-based, specific and can be objectively confirmed by consulting with other people, checking documents, using various forms of testing or observing how we actually live our lives - sex, age/DOB, height, weight, race/ethnicity/relatives, country of origin, place of residence, citizenship, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, IQ, level of education, professional qualifications, line of work, work accomplishments, salary, income, level of wealth, relationship or marital status, parental status, political affiliation, hobbies, interests, cholesterol level, state of health, and so on.

But many of the beliefs and feelings that go into - and are at the core of - our self-concepts are much more vague, global and subjective and have to do with the deep-seated sense we acquired during childhood of whether we are worthy or unworthy, lovable or unlovable, attractive or ugly, smart or stupid, competent or useless, a disappointment or a joy to our parents, just like the other kids or an oddball/misfit/outcast, and so on.

It's quite common for people's self-concepts to contain beliefs and feelings that are at odds with one another, and which are not reality-based.

Lots of people who intellectually know that by objective standards they are of normal body weight and have decent looks still feel they are fat and ugly, and they loathe their appearance or aspects of it. On the other hand, some people who know that by all objective standards they are unattractive nonetheless see themselves as a real catch. Lots of smart people consider themselves dumb or inept, whilst many people who aren't particularly bright see themselves as near-geniuses.

Traditionally, marked differences were seen in the self-concepts and self-assessments of the two sexes. Females tended to see ourselves as less attractive, less intelligent & less competent than we are, and to regard ourselves as far less deserving - or wholly unworthy - of respect & compassion than other people are. By contrast, males tended to see themselves as more attractive, intelligent & competent than they are, and to see themselves as entitled to respect & compassion even when they behave badly.

Today, "identity" as used in common parlance amongst young people seems to be much more about how individuals want the outer world to perceive them than about the inner dialogue/reputation they have with themselves.

Though we all get our ideas about ourselves from others (family, school, religions, media, etc) growing up, our self-concepts nevertheless basically consist of private thoughts and feelings we have inside our own heads and hearts. Traditionally the core issue in achieving self-esteem and peace with one's self was developing acceptance and love for ourselves as we actually are.

But "identity" as the term is used today seems to be about a having sense of self that's based largely on desired & chosen qualities that are imaginary or wholly illusory - and which people announce and perform in public in hopes that this will bring "validation" and likes from others. The belief seems to be that if your ideal self/chosen identity obtains enough external approval & validation from external sources, it will allay all the distress, emptiness, anxieties and feelings of inauthenticity gnawing inside.

In the old days, we used to make a distinction between the real self & the ideal self. The real self is who each of us believes and feels ourselves actually to be. The ideal self is who each of us thinks we should be, or we wish we could be. Is/ought.

Traditionally, having a big gap between your real self & your ideal/desired self meant you had low self-esteem and anxiety, personal issues for individuals to sort out in therapy. But today, having a big gap between your real self & your ideal/desired self is taken as a sign that you are oppressed, a political issue.

Nowadays, many people who are struggling with the dissonance between who they are in actuality versus who they wish they were have become convinced that the whole world is obliged to provide them with a) reassurance that their ideal/desired selves are real - aka "validation" - and b) all/any medical treatments & cosmetic procedures that can make them appear to come closer to their ideal/desired selves.

"Identity" as the term is used today seems to be all about adopting ready-made labels, making public pronouncements of your labels, performing roles and play-acting.

As I was writing this, I see Houseplant posted:

I remember in social work the identity thing was a big deal with my clients who lived with severe and treatment resistant personality disorders. They’re the only group of people I’ve ever seen think and talk about their identity as much as tra does.

This is my experience as well as someone who extensively studied & wrote about self-concept formation & how males & females develop and conceptualize their sense of self in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The people who spoke of & focused on their "identity" were people with severe mental health problems.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Given your level of experience, I sincerely appreciate you sharing your perspective on this--thank you! I suppose I should have done a bit more research into the differentiation between definitions of "self-concept" and "identity"; I like language, but I miss a lot. But your first point about the immensity by which we change throughout our lives really rings true, like I said elsewhere about how we need to be able to change much about ourselves to overcome hardships and adapt and grow.

I like that idea that one's self-concept is the reputation one has with themselves, that just seems like a fantastic way to frame that. If that is sort of the way to best view the idea of self-concept, it would make sense that, as you say, some changes are more difficult to accept or reconcile than others. Perhaps if we like a particular way we view ourselves, that makes it all the more difficult to accept change regarding that facet. I hope I'm understanding you correctly, but what I'm putting together makes sense in my head.

"Identity" in its more contemporary usage really seems to be more about labels or a desire to be seen as fitting a specific label--performative, as you say. Do you think that it might be more helpful for everyone to divert attention away from the idea of identity and redirect it towards something like self-concept? Do you think people might have a more healthy vision of themselves? And do you think that obsession with identity that you and Houseplant have seen in people with severe mental illness might actually have better mental health if they could reduce or eliminate that fixation on themselves? I guess it makes me wonder whether an obsession over identity is solely a symptom, and perhaps it's part of a cause for mental illness.

I think it's Jung who wrote about the shadow self (correct me if I'm wrong though), and I wonder if the way "identity" is framed and treated today, as some idealized vision of oneself, is an attempt to bring that shadow self to life. Like, there are some concepts that Carlos Castaneda wrote about the idea of a "dreaming self" that I find interesting to this day (despite him being a creep, cult leader and passing off fiction as fact). I'm not sure exactly how these things might be related exactly, but I just have this intuition that they may be.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Do you think that it might be more helpful for everyone to divert attention away from the idea of identity and redirect it towards something like self-concept? Do you think people might have a more healthy vision of themselves? And do you think that obsession with identity that you and Houseplant have seen in people with severe mental illness might actually have better mental health if they could reduce or eliminate that fixation on themselves?

Yes to all these questions.

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think it's Jung who wrote about the shadow self (correct me if I'm wrong though), and I wonder if the way "identity" is framed and treated today, as some idealized vision of oneself, is an attempt to bring that shadow self to life.

It's been many years since I read Jung, but my recollection is that the shadow self as he portrayed it is the part of our psyche were we shove and try to exile all the aspects of ourselves we have been taught to - or we naturally - deny, disown and try to stamp out. IIRC, the shadow self is pretty much the opposite of the ideal self. It's sort of the junk drawer or ghetto nabe of the self - the place we put all the aspects of ourselves we deem unpleasant and unacceptable in the hopes that once "out of sight, out of mind" they'll all just fade away in darkness. But one of Jung's points was that the more we try to hide and kill off these aspects of ourselves, the stronger and more powerful they become. So the more shadowy your shadow self, the larger it looms over your self in entirety.

As always, what constitutes the ideal self and the despised shadow self varies depending on sex. As children, many female people are taught to revile the parts of our personalities that are aggressive, loud, rude, selfish, coarse, rough, violent, cruel, sexually pleasure-seeking, gluttonous, domineering, bossy and so on - and those sorts of traits get shoved into our shadow selves. As children, many male people are taught to revile the parts of their personalities that are unaggressive, soft-spoken, shy, retiring, delicate, bashful, "soft," refined, artistic, kind, sensitive and so on.

So maybe for some males who develop genuine childhood gender dysphoria coz they were shamed into squelching and disowning personality traits of theirs that were deemed "unmanly" or "feminine," embracing an opposite-sex "gender identity" is a way of owning the shadow self. And the reverse for females who developed genuine GD in childhood.

However, it seems to me that the aggressive, entitled, misogynistic, violent male people who are jumping on the trans bandwagon and claiming to have an opposite sex or non-binary gender identity in order to lord it over, sexually subjugate, intimidate, silence and terrorize female people do not have enough of a shadow self. These guys seem wholly unashamed of, and not at all inclined to try to hide, all the aspects of their personalities that most people would find reprehensible or at least questionable. The selves they present to the world strike me as certainly nothin' to write home about or brag on social media about. And yet they go on.

Moreover, most of the girls and young women who today are claiming to be the opposite sex or neither sex did not have childhood dysphoria. Their issues with their sex and gender roles have arisen after the onset of puberty.

But back to the general convo: it seems to me that the way identity is being framed today has more in common with what in psychology used to be called the persona - which Oxford defines as

the the aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others

The persona in this sense is the opposite of anima, which in psych used to mean the self we each perceive privately and inwardly. Basically the self-concept, or the reputation you have with yourself.

However, in Jungian psych, the anima has a very different meaning: Jung used anima to describe the parts of a male's personality that are considered feminine. Whereas animus in Jung terminology means the aspects of a female's personality that are deemed masculine.

Speaking of which, I do think that Jung's concept of anima and animus are very useful in convos about gender identity. Just as most human beings have the capacity to be incredibly kind and loving as well as incredibly cruel and hateful, each one of us has personality traits that run the gamut of "masculine" and "feminine" both - depending on how our particular cultures define those terms.

Like, there are some concepts that Carlos Castaneda wrote about the idea of a "dreaming self"

I have hardly any recollections of what Castaneda said or wrote. When you brought up his name, what sprang to my mind was how in the 1960s he helped to popularize the use of peyote - and indirectly other hallucinogens of the era such as LSD, mescaline and ketamine. Drugs whose use I think can be highly beneficial for many people.

Which leads to another issue I often wonder about: what proportion of people with cross-sex gender identities, or who now identify as of no sex, have used hallucinogenics - and in doses sufficient for a full trip? My hunch is not many - or not enough.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you for clarifying about the shadow self, that makes more sense put that way.

As always, what constitutes the ideal self and the despised shadow self varies depending on sex. As children, many female people are taught to revile the parts of our personalities that are aggressive, loud, rude, selfish, coarse, rough, violent, cruel, sexually pleasure-seeking, gluttonous, domineering, bossy and so on - and those sorts of traits get shoved into our shadow selves. As children, many male people are taught to revile the parts of their personalities that are unaggressive, soft-spoken, shy, retiring, delicate, bashful, "soft," refined, artistic, kind, sensitive and so on.

So maybe for some males who develop genuine childhood gender dysphoria coz they were shamed into squelching and disowning personality traits of theirs that were deemed "unmanly" or "feminine," embracing an opposite-sex "gender identity" is a way of owning the shadow self. And the reverse for females who developed genuine GD in childhood.

That's a very, very interesting consideration. Do you think if one embraces or "owns" their shadow self, that he or she would then not have a shadow self? Or do other aspects that are rejected become new parts of the shadow self? In this conceptualization, it makes sense that TRAs who perhaps have no self-restraint and are more destructively uninhibited would have less of a shadow self, but it does make me wonder why if females and males who develop GD in childhood are embracing their shadow selves that they wouldn't necessarily become uninhibited like the people who didn't have enough of one to begin with.

Speaking of which, I do think that Jung's concept of anima and animus are very useful in convos about gender identity. Just as most human beings have the capacity to be incredibly kind and loving as well as incredibly cruel and hateful, each one of us has personality traits that run the gamut of "masculine" and "feminine" both - depending on how our particular cultures define those terms.

Those concepts intrigue me, I will have to read about those in depth! I've heard the words before, but I did not know what they meant exactly.

I have hardly any recollections of what Castaneda said or wrote. When you brought up his name, what sprang to my mind was how in the 1960s he helped to popularize the use of peyote - and indirectly other hallucinogens of the era such as LSD, mescaline and ketamine. Drugs whose use I think can be highly beneficial for many people.

Which leads to another issue I often wonder about: what proportion of people with cross-sex gender identities, or who now identify as of no sex, have used hallucinogenics - and in doses sufficient for a full trip? My hunch is not many - or not enough.

Castaneda's work was what piqued my interest in hallucinogens and their potential to change the mind. My dad read me "The Teachings of Don Juan" when I was little, so in my late teens I started using hallucinogens under the guidance of Castaneda's books to try to cure myself (I've read them all at least twice). It almost certainly would have been more beneficial to have worked with a therapist while doing this rather than on my own, but I did come to understand more about myself I feel and make a little more peace, though I wasn't able to cure my GD or transsexualism. It would be interesting to try that again now with a therapist not necessarily to try to cure myself of that, but just to better myself overall. But maybe it could provide some sort of relief or cure for some people. That's an interesting thought you bring up!

[–]Penultimate_Penance 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for explaining self concept. That makes a lot of sense!