Who are we when nobody’s watching?
We like to imagine that somewhere beneath our social roles, expectations, and carefully cultivated identities lies an authentic self. A version of ourselves untouched by the demands of others.
But what if that self doesn’t exist?
For centuries, philosophers have wrestled with the question of authenticity. Jean-Jacques Rousseau described how social expectations, vanity, and the desire for approval alienate individuals from their “natural inclinations.” Later thinkers, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre expanded upon the idea of seeking one’s “true self.”
Today, we devote considerable time, energy, and money to that same pursuit. Through meditation, psychoanalysis, psychedelics, spirituality, intimate relationships, and countless books, we seek to discover and express our “true selves.”
But just who is this authentic person, this ideal self, and what are its values towards others?
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to authenticity is the assumption that somewhere beneath our many social performances lies a fixed, original self waiting to be discovered.
Because of how we’re socialized from birth, achieving full authenticity will always be elusive. Beyond socialization, our sense of self requires continual updating as we age and cultural influences evolve. But that doesn’t mean you give up the search. Many barriers obstruct the search for one’s true self, most of them coming from our immediate social circles and from the broader culture. In this essay, I focus on but one of these barriers, namely how we go through life essentially “acting” out scripted roles set for us.
Our identities emerge from a complex set of biological propensities, early social learning, and cultural influences. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida (2001) coined the term bricolage to refer to the process of identity formation. We borrow incomplete bits and pieces—some DNA here, some early childhood experiences there, and some influences from culture, history, and everywhere—to form identities.
We rarely choose what ultimately comprises the narrative we call self. Some, like educational achievement, occupational standing, or geographical location, involve personal agency. Other forces shape us as life progresses. Some enrich; others traumatize. Yet we weave these fragments into seemingly coherent stories about who we are.
Your character, a wonderful word because of its allusion to theater (Karbelnig, 2020), consists of sets of labels. We tend to use nouns to describe ourselves, and these represent an exercise in fiction. If you meet a stranger at a party, you may discuss your family status; you may disclose your occupation; or you may share your recreational interests. These terms hardly represent your actual living experiences. They function like place markings in a book or addresses on a street—to represent seemingly fixed aspects of our lives. The verbs interspersed between these nouns are less definable, and it is within these movements that scripts are created. In a sense, they create the glue between the nouns.
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan offered a particularly provocative challenge to conventional notions of authenticity: Our sense of self emerges through our relationships with others. Lacan (1978) famously writes:
Self = (M)other.
Translation: Our “selves” emerge from our initial dependence upon, and identification with, the maternal Other. Over time, and as just suggested, the “self” evolves through identifications, language, and the desires of others. Lacan, therefore, challenges conventional notions of authenticity. If the “self” is created through alienating identifications and shaped by unconscious forces, then you cannot recover some pristine, original self. That self never existed independently of them.
Sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) presents similar thoughts even though he probably never even heard of Lacan. He believed personal identity was specifically performative. In other words, our identities are not simply fixed qualities residing within us. They are, instead, continually constructed, expressed, and negotiated through our interactions with others. He expands upon Lacan’s idea that we form identifications through others by proposing these become literally enacted.
We present different versions of ourselves depending on our audience, the social setting, and the impressions we wish to create. We have our “front stage” and our “back stage” behaviors. But, interestingly, we are also acting when we are “just ourselves.” The way we perform socially recognizable roles in public, and we reserve expressing other aspects of ourselves for more private settings, seems fairly self-evident.
But what about how we perform when we are alone? We have no choice but to continue the theatrical show, even to ourselves. Imagine yourself waking up, perhaps coming out of a dream state. We quickly begin organizing our thoughts in terms of the “I” we’ve learned to enact. It is little more than an act, a kind of silent, internal play, as you proceed to reflect on your state of being, or your plans for the day, using this theatrical play you think of as “self.”
Not only do we perform these identities, but we also depend on a reasonably coherent sense of self to navigate everyday life.
Certain psychiatric conditions can disrupt this continuity of self-experience and our capacity to imagine other people as independent individuals with lives beyond our immediate encounters.
I encountered a striking example of this many years ago while treating a middle-aged woman I’ll call Jane, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I provided twice-weekly psychotherapy, and she also consulted a psychiatrist who prescribed antipsychotic medication. I used to work on the second floor of an office building which looked out on the parking lot. Once, for reasons I don’t recall, I asked Jane how she pictured me leaving the office. We stood together, looking out the window into the parking lot, and I asked her:
Can you imagine me driving through that lot on my way home?
Yes.
Can you imagine me turning right onto that street just outside the lot?
Yes.
What about when I make the left on that next street (which we both could see)?
Hmmm…. No, I can’t really see you anymore.
What happens to me?
I can’t tell you. I don’t know. You just disappear.
On occasion, Jane called me in states of panic between sessions. I’d spend five or ten minutes speaking with her, and then suggest we pick up the topic at our next session. To bring the call to an end, I’d say something like,
OK, I have to go now.
Really?
I’m sorry, but yes.
Jane's response was neither anger nor resentment. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the idea that I continued to exist as a person with a separate life outside our sessions.
The implications of how we are acting, even with ourselves, are fascinating. It helps explain the phenomenon of “bad trips” on hallucinogenics. Some people fall into states of panic when their theatrical performances fail, when their enactments of their selves become dismantled. It is also for this reason that people with schizophrenia should approach Zen meditation, or similar approaches, with caution. They, too, might face unmanageable fear by looking inward. You must have a functioning self before you experiment with discarding it.
So what does it mean to live authentically if our identities are inevitably performed? Perhaps authenticity has less to do with discovering a hidden, original self than with becoming more aware of the forces that shape the selves we enact.
We can begin to recognize the unconscious influences, social expectations, and inherited scripts that guide our behavior. We can ask why we present certain versions of ourselves to certain people, and whether those performances reflect the values we wish to live by.
We may never escape the theater of the self. But we can become more conscious of the roles we play and surrender to the fact that our search for authenticity must, of necessity, remain an ongoing pursuit.
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References
Derrida, J. (2001), Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge, pp. 278-294.
Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday.
Lacan, J. (1978). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsychoanalysis. J. Miller (Ed.). Trans. A. Sheriden. New York: Norton.
Karbelnig, A. M. (2020). The theater of the unconscious mind. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 37(4):273–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000251
Rousseau, J.-J. (1997). The discourses and other early political writings* (V. Gourevitch, Ed. & Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1755)
Loved this Alan, thanks!