It's the concept that individuals tend to think of themselves as projecting a certain physical appearance, or certain position of social entitlement, or lack thereofWhile cycling back home I started thinking about what to write and as I always do I just decide to pick whatever I have been thinking during the day or more recently (during the week). With a little bit of research around the subject I found that self-image is tightly related to a the more generic concept of self-schema: the beliefs and ideas people have about themselves.
As Luigi Pirandello put it in his 1936 novel One, No one and One Hundred Thousand, each person is never him/herself except when alone. Without any scientific support Pirandello acknowledged the presence of multiple self-schemas in each individual, leading to internal conflicts and external miss-perceptions.
We have different visions of ourselves, different projections that kick-in every time we are interacting with more than one person at a time. When interacting with more than one person, say two people with whom we behave very differently our multiple self-schemas may clash with each other causing internal conflict. This theory explains why we feel uncomfortable when interacting with two people that know us from two very different environments, it's the uncomfortable and subtle feeling of helplessness when your friends meet your family. Are you going to be the friend or the daughter in that case?
This subject always fascinates me as I am sometimes aware of the conflicts I experience when dealing with so many different people for whom I am someone completely different, a great advantage I'd say.
3 comments:
It's true, you have different personalities in different contexts or with different people. I disagree that your true self is when you're alone, though. Every personality is part of who you are... and you can't really define who you are, because so many different aspects are part of you, and all changing over time. Interesting stuff :)
It is indeed very interesting. The theory your true self is just when you are alone is a twisted version of what Pirandello says. In practice when we are alone with ourselves, that is another self-image we have and many times is really different from what we hare with others. I like to take things to the extremes sometimes... ;)
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