Self Types & Their Differences Across Generations and the Life-C Ycle

SELF TYPES & THEIR DIFFERENCES ACROSS GENERATIONS

AND THE LIFE-C YCLE

With modernization, the quest for knowledge of oneself has become a major preoccupation for many Americans. "Who am I?" "Know Thyself" and "Unto thine own self be true"--Such are the themes of wall plaques, self-help manuals, and religious maxims. When surveying older individuals' reflections on the whole of life, one 83-year-old nun told one of my student researchers:

I would tell any young person to be your own self. Have a real good idea of your own strengths--they usually take care of the weaknesses. Find out where you fit in and what makes you happy. If you drift from one thing to another you will never be satisfied. If you don't find the part of yourself that will give you fulfillment you'll never be satisfied or content. You have to learn about and live with your true self.

Observed Helen Merrell Lynd, "the search for identity has become as strategic in our time as the study of sexuality was in Freud's time" (On Shame and the Search for Identity. New York : Science Editions, 1961:14). But what does this all mean? In part, it's our peculiar cultural obsession to search for a self that we supposedly don't know. It also involves the extreme individualism of American culture.

The sense of identity is important to both human psychology and to sociology. Not only does having a sense of self provide the sense of having free will ("This is who I am and this is what I want to do, therefore I am going to do it despite what others say") but it is also a basis of social control ("We Smiths are an industrious people and I am not about to let my people down by goofing off.").

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF SELFHOOD

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.

--Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825)

Ironically, although the concept of self is one of the oldest and most enduring of psychological depictions of human nature, social scientists have yet to reach a consensus on precisely what the self is. Following those of the psychoanalytic perspective, do we understand personality as a cause of behavior or, as behaviorists, do we see personality as the effect of behavior (or, at least, the effect of others' reinforcements)? Is the self something you are (or, in the case of the very old or terminally ill, something you were), something you have, or is it something you aspire to be? Is it no more than a set of unique, identifying characteristics and, if so, from whose perspective: the actor or those who view him or her? Can, indeed, others know one's self better than the individual knows himself or herself? Or might it be that identity is determined not on the basis of who one thinks one is, but rather on the basis of who one is not--in other words, selfhood is a matter of exclusion rather than inclusion?

Studies of those with multiple personalities, or dissociative identity disorder, indicate interesting connections between body, mind and self. Here one individual may have numerous sub-personalities, each with its own name, age, memories, knowledge of foreign languages, temperament, handedness, talents, and medical conditions. Such persons may carry multiple glasses because their vision changes with each personality. Some sub-selves may be color blind or epileptic and while others are not. Rashes, blisters and scars may appear and disappear as different selves emerge.

Consider the expression "I know the type," when referring to a particular person. Implicit in the line is the assumption that there are types of selves and that each can be expected to act in distinctive ways in different types of situations. Such taxonomies of others make up a sizable portion of our everyday theories of social life. In schools, we create typologies of students (e.g.," nerd," "jock," "brown-noser," etc.) and faculty members, and routinely compare the predictiveness of our classifications with others. If, indeed, such connections between selves and behaviors really exist, why do they occur? Do these types of selves unthinkingly act in typical fashion, or is it the case that their behavior is determined by their self-concepts?

At least since when the Greek philosopher Empedocles began classifying personalities into the categories of air, earth, fire and water, people have attempted to explain variations in human behavior in terms of self-type drives. (Have you noticed how often Greek mythological figures are used as labels for various personality types? Why? Is there a universality to personality types--e.g., those with excessive hubris [Prometheus]