Intro to psychology
01/11/19 Social selves and identities
What do we mean by identity?
Personal identity or ‘self’
Makes us who we are
- Social identity
- Gender identity
- Cultural identity
- Physical identity
The word identity appears in 1570 as ‘identitie’.
“The quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or
in particular qualities under consideration; absolute or essential sameness; oneness’.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
Psychological definition:
The phenomenological sense that one has of one’s own intrinsic self, independent of
all others
Sameness of essential or generic character in different instances.
Do we have a ‘core self’ that is accessible?
A debate that goes back a few years:
- Plato 430-355 BC: ‘know thy self’
“[The] organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world becoming,
until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest
region of being.”
- Heraclitus c. 500BC: The ‘transient self’
“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing is fixed.”
Big theories of identity: Essentialists VS Non-essentialists
Essentialists
- All objects, our ‘selves’ included have a core essence
- Continuous core of sameness (call it a self, soul, DNA, ego, etc.) that is resistant
to change
- In the extreme: the person is the same today as they were yesterday as they
were 40 years ago (John Lock, 1690)
- A conceptualism that underpins mainstream cognitive psychology.
This is very much a part of our psychology and day-to-day discourse:
Implies a ‘core’ self that is accessible to ourselves
01/11/19 Social selves and identities
What do we mean by identity?
Personal identity or ‘self’
Makes us who we are
- Social identity
- Gender identity
- Cultural identity
- Physical identity
The word identity appears in 1570 as ‘identitie’.
“The quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or
in particular qualities under consideration; absolute or essential sameness; oneness’.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
Psychological definition:
The phenomenological sense that one has of one’s own intrinsic self, independent of
all others
Sameness of essential or generic character in different instances.
Do we have a ‘core self’ that is accessible?
A debate that goes back a few years:
- Plato 430-355 BC: ‘know thy self’
“[The] organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world becoming,
until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest
region of being.”
- Heraclitus c. 500BC: The ‘transient self’
“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing is fixed.”
Big theories of identity: Essentialists VS Non-essentialists
Essentialists
- All objects, our ‘selves’ included have a core essence
- Continuous core of sameness (call it a self, soul, DNA, ego, etc.) that is resistant
to change
- In the extreme: the person is the same today as they were yesterday as they
were 40 years ago (John Lock, 1690)
- A conceptualism that underpins mainstream cognitive psychology.
This is very much a part of our psychology and day-to-day discourse:
Implies a ‘core’ self that is accessible to ourselves
