notions of identity soul integrity and
above all a sense of self it’s a
question of supreme importance because
in it we locate our value and our values
in fact having no self or having a
valueless self feels like death yet
psychological research now shows us that
the concept of in itself as an enduring
and cohesive entity is illusory
there is no brain area or neural
activity that can be correlated with the
self there is no stable store of memory
that can define a self memories it turns
out are constantly being reconstructed
and revised physically we change cells
are replaced so there’s no fixed
material thread running throughout our
lives the self psychologists tell us is
an illusion but the fact that it’s an
illusion doesn’t mean it’s false it
simply means we may not be seeing it as
it really is
so instead of discarding it this is an
opportunity to think anew about key
concepts of the self and the first thing
that we want to think about is its
origin how does a sense of self arise
where does this concept of me inside a
body come from well a sense of Who I am
develops in the distinctive
interpersonal world of humans it is
relational we are born into
relationships in which we’re totally
dependent we are dependent on others to
feed us keep us warm and keep us safe
and their responses to us also breathe
in to us the idea
of a self now there are many brain
shaping forces of parental pair but here
I want to focus on how that phenomenal
communicator the human face sets the
groundwork for the idea of a self now
even before birth retinal cells send
signals to the brain and waves of
activity cross the unborn infants eye so
that by the time the newborn does open
her eyes the brain will be prepared for
its work recognizing and responding to
faces and there’s also a reflex that
ensures the newborn turns towards the
person who holds her and shows a special
interest in a face when the eyes are
directed at her and what normally
happens in a normal good enough
environment parent and infant locked
together in a mutual gaze each absorbed
and fascinated by the other and this
mutual gaze is sometimes referred to as
I love it bypasses language it is rich
with adoration and romance in fact it
floods the infant with the same hormones
that trigger that high of sexual love
and these chemically powerful exchanges
introduce us to the importance of what
others see and how they see us so babies
soon learn in this normal or good enough
environment that a face looking at them
will be responsive and curious and about
the age of two months they reciprocate
by smiling at a face – looking directly
at them the smiling is more than mimicry
it’s a response to the message what I
see is wonderful I think you’re good I
think you have value and this message is
essential to our emotion
and indeed our psychological well-being
but it’s not sufficient in and of itself
to give substance to our sense of self
it’s in large part what happens when an
infant experiences need and stress that
initiates this concept of an inner me we
can see that when a baby cries he or she
is filled with chaotic terrible emotions
flooded with these emotions and a carer
is likely to respond by composing her
face in some aspects in some respects
that mirror the baby’s distress so there
will be an exaggerated frown and a
furrowed brow but there are also cooing
soothing noises and in this response
which is called marked mirroring the
carer is able to convey the highly
sophisticated message that she is not
sharing the baby or the child’s feelings
but she is looking in to his feelings
she’s not feeling the same thing he’s
feeling but she is able to give him a
concept of his or her mental state and
the understanding that other people can
look in to what she’s feeling and
perhaps even help her manage those
chaotic overwhelming feelings now of
course this doesn’t happen all at once
but in the first months and years of
life brain circuits proliferate day by
day that provide the mental software for
thinking about our inner world and
eventually this develops into a very
impressive capacity called mentalizing
now mentalizing is different from
knowing what an other person thinks it’s
different from empathizing with another
person it’s the ability to identify
one’s own thoughts and feelings
and to see that these inform one’s
behavior and that other people are
responding to you because they see your
behavior and understand from that your
thoughts and feelings and it also
provides you with a model for seeing
into other people’s thoughts and
feelings from their behavior you learn
how to interpret their behavior and here
we begin to have a clear sense of
yourself and myself but there’s a second
aspect of a question Who am I
because I want to be able to distinguish
Who I am
from who other people are part of the
value we give ourselves and give to
others is uniqueness however important
it is for us to be connected to others
it’s important for us to be an
individual and navigating that human
urge to fit in with others to be liked
by others to be like others on the one
hand and the human urge to be
distinctive on the other is part of the
everyday work of the cells and this
develops in different ways over time so
the two-year-olds Tantrums I want to do
it myself this is the cornerstone of an
effective and empowered self later in
friendships the child develops a whole
new sense of her character through her
peers she discovers that she can
entertain others she can comfort others
it’s a whole new interpersonal world
outside the family and she discovers a
new range of herself but it is in
adolescence that we can see the true
heat and power of this urge to define a
self there’s a lot of anxiety and
excitement in the teen sense of self
because the teen is looking forward
to who she might become and herself is
unknown uncertain but also full of
glamour and friends at this point become
increasingly important as a sounding
board for who she might be and we do
know that at this time teens are at risk
of losing their self as they simply seek
a reflection in their friends and try to
fit in with their friends but most teens
also use friendships to experiment with
and explore and articulate who they are
but the power of peers even in
adolescence is often exaggerated teen
parent exchanges were focused on the
teens challenge to the parent do you see
who I am do you see who I am now because
the teen wanted to update a parent’s
outmoded view of them as a child and you
don’t really know me I heard over and
over again as I observed parent and teen
exchanges and that was a challenge to
the parent to the slow stick-in-the-mud
parent who wasn’t able to keep up with a
changing teen and arguments would arise
as the teen went to work on a parent to
shake her into a new awareness of who
she was so a lot of parent team conflict
has been in the past interpreted as the
teens efforts to rebel against or
separate from a parent but in fact I
found that a lot of this conflict was a
desperate bid for recognition from a
parent whose reflection was still very
very important to the team now the
intimacy between who I am and who I am
in relation to others
makes us vulnerable to poor
relationships and to ruptures in
relationships so children are very
vulnerable to parental neglect or abuse
and throughout our lives were vulnerable
to bereavement Who am I
we may ask when a parent or a partner
dies and part of this is because we
identify as a son or daughter or a
partner of that person but there’s also
a blankness because death deprives us of
that resonance from that person that
resonance that sort of helped us make
out the boundaries or the shape of our
selves and then think about ruptures and
relationships or conflict-ridden
relationships that will often give us a
bad resonance so the rage that so often
emerges in the prolonged process of
divorce results from the insult of that
negative mirroring from someone who was
once entrusted to present a very
positive reflection and here emerges a
third crucial element in the question
Who am I we need to find an answer that
is comfortable that gives us pride and
psychology has endless fodder from the
minds quirks in supporting its own
self-esteem
there’s the self-serving bias which can
distort memory and perception making me
thinks that I’m better than I am or that
my assets are more important than my
deficits my successes are more important
than my failures I even likely to have a
much better memory for times when I
behaved well than I am for times when I
behaved badly or memory may serve my
esteem so well that I remember
myself behaving well even when in fact I
behaved badly there’s also the
superiority illusion that makes us feel
we’re a cut above others so most people
think that they are less biased than
other people more tolerant that they’re
more committed to more engaged with
their moral values than other people and
90% of people when asked about their
driving skills will say that as drivers
they are better than average so the
superiority illusion allows us to defy
the laws of average and be sure that we
are above average there’s also the
fundamental attribution error which may
support our esteem but often at the
expense of our relationships because the
attribution error means that I am sure
that my bad behavior or my mistakes or
my failures are due to something in the
environment around me whereas your
failures your mistakes any accident you
have any bad behavior that’s the result
of your character and we can see this as
having a devastating effect in
interpersonal quarrels
particularly in marital quarrels now we
need this protection even though it can
get us into trouble we need it because
seeing ourselves negatively is painful
in fact people who lack all of these
self-serving biases are at risk of
clinical depression but even smaller
fronts to our esteem is painful
think about embarrassment something only
a very social animal can feel and that
is so painful that sometimes when we’re
embarrassed we say I was mortified and
mortified comes from the word mortis
meaning death and it’s a good
description of that in word crumbling
that wish to die and
appear that we feel when even for a
moment our self is covered in shame and
deep and more prolonged shame can result
not only from what we do and how we mess
up but how others treat us so if we’re
excluded if we’re abused if we’re
bullied we can feel that we are living
in a state of shame and because shame is
so toxic to the self many people choose
death rather than live with the
brutality of shame as the psychiatrist
James Gilligan says shame is tantamount
to the death of the self and without
confirmation of its value the self dies
as surely as the body dies without
oxygen so the question Who am I has been
a starting point for philosophy
psychology history and literature and
our current inability to give a succinct
definition doesn’t diminish its power
its power can sometimes distort us and
mislead us but it’s capable of fueling
our curiosity intelligence and
imagination not only about ourselves our
values and our desires but also about
the other people with whom we live who
are equally engaged with the question Who am I