13 April 2024
If we dare consider the combined impact, on a Gen Z consciousness, of catastrophization, black & white thinking, a victim-mentality, and a keenness for cancellation, it can hardly be surprising that we have far too large a proportion of one generation mired in anxiety and depression. To add insult to injury, in Canada, we have allowed our hard-earned and highly taxed dollars to foster and promote more of the same through uncritical support of university research that seeks to justify such epistemic tragedies as progress toward greater enlightenment. The irony cannot be more caustic for what this thinking fosters is epistemic and social chaos. Welcome to the 21st-century.
To enhance objectivity, readers should know that Twenge (2023) and Haidt (2023) were research allies in this argument. Santer, Manago, & Bleisch (2023), had no horse in that race i.e., their research had no known relationship to Twenge or Haidt. In fact, Santer et al. (2023) rely strictly on qualitative findings in their examination of contemporary selfhood. Upon first reading the section headings of their paper, I thought I was in the wrong discipline with titles like The Self as an Authentic Brand and The Social Media Context (of self-formation).
The definition presented by Santer et al., (2023), positioned self as “…developing over time and also as a product of social interaction, a ‘collaborative manufacture’ between an individual and an audience” (Goffman, 1959; Mead, 1934 as cited in Santer et al., 2023, p. 81). That the self develops over time raises no issues from this quarter nor, depending on how it is framed, does “collaborative manufacture” but audience is a performative, public term in a place of ultimate privacy. Stated more explicitly, while we test-drive tentative parts of the self in different milieux, particularly in adolescence, the decision of what stays and what goes must be based on an embodied and entirely personal felt sense of satisfaction and fit—otherwise, per above, the self is worn as a performative costume making authenticity—and self-knowledge—impossible. As such, to my ears, Santer et al.’s (2023) heading The Self as an Authentic Brand could stand in as a dictionary example of an oxymoron.
Indeed, it is authenticity that haunted some of the final thinkers influencing my stance on the self, namely Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Brinkmann (2020), two Danes separated by a couple centuries. It was Kierkegaard who named existentialism and forewarned of the ultimately self-destructive nature of inauthenticity i.e., not understanding and being yourself (Atkinson & Tomley, 2012; Audi, 1998).
Brinkmann’s (2020) contribution to selfhood was in his return to the Aristotelian roots of that concept. Brinkmann (2020) insisted that we include all of a human life in our understanding of people, or bios, the study of whole human lives, rather than exclusively mental lives. He explicitly defied Descartes’ dualistic stance making him an ally of the integrationist school of philosophers of mind like Clark (2016) and other proponents of embodied active situated intelligence (EASI). This emerging school of thought is attempting to understand the interrelationships within human creatures but also between humans and their environments. Clark (2016) has sketched out human intelligence as hypothesis-seeking and hypothesis-confirming environmental agency.
This makes sense, in terms of evolution, as those able to successfully navigate their relationships and environments live to procreate. Both Giulia Enders (2015) and Annie Murphy Paul (2021) respectively mapped out evidence in favour of the gut-brain axis, and in Paul’s (2021) case, environmental extensions allowing one “…the freedom to move one’s body…the proximity of natural green spaces; control over one’s personal workspace, or relationships with informed experts and accomplished peers” as necessary correlates of success (Paul, 2021, p. 17). In keeping with Maslovian thought, without those extensions, is self-actualization possible? Enders (2015) provided emerging research that “knowing something in one’s gut” implicates greater neural density than does knowing something in one’s brain.
As promised earlier, to aid readers in the integration of this wide-ranging theoretical base, Table X, below, includes a numbered summary of the sixteen primary themes discussed to this point.
Table X: Dimensions of the Self by Source, Revision 1
| No. | Dimension “The self…” | Source |
| 1 | …exists in a state of continual flux | Heraclitus |
| 2 | …has the capacity for movement | Aristotle |
| 3 | …has movement directed by self-actualization | Aristotle |
| 4 | …embodies values (explicit or implicit), drives actions, and rates of change | Heraclitus, Aristotle, Existentialism |
| 5 | …is conscious and unconscious simultaneously | Herbart |
| 6 | …seeks meaning (or surrenders to helpless meaninglessness) | Aristotle, Existentialism |
| 7 | …begins alone, seemingly thrown into the world | Existentialism |
| 8 | …grapples (or fails to grapple) with its own finity and death | Existentialism |
| 9 | …is blessed (or cursed) with the responsibility of freedom of choice | Existentialism |
| 10 | …has the capacity for relation-based transformation | Rogers et al., Phenomenology |
| 11 | …embodies Eros (life force) and Thanatos, (death force) | Freud |
| 12 | …when emotionally arrested, has a repetition compulsion | Freud et al. |
| 13 | …can be coerced, dogmatized, and brainwashed into acts of obscene cruelty | Steiner |
| 14 | …seeks necessary coherence, comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness to maintain health | Antonovsky |
| 15 16 | …has security needs (safety, connection, and self-esteem) and growth needs (exploration, love, and purpose). …flourishes in proportion to extensive, active, situated opportunities for intelligent interactions. | Maslow/Kaufman Clark, Brinkmann, Enders, Paul |
That chart, and most of the theory used to create it, came together in March/April 2023. Since that time, I have experienced another year of practicing psychotherapy with clients presenting with a broad clinical range of disorders. Nothing I am seeing in that chart has not been seen in sessions of psychotherapy. While I cannot imagine a randomized controlled trial through which I could prove the existence of the repetition compulsion or Thanatos, the explanatory and predictive power of these inferred dimensions of the self are sufficient to allow effective treatment and explanatory power borne out by repeated symptomatic presentations of longer- and shorter-term clients.
On another level altogether, mankind has seen the Hamas-initiated atrocities of 7 October 2023 paradoxically increasing antisemitism. We have also seen the intentional killing of Alexei Navalny on 16 February 2024, as Putin rewrites history in aid of the demolition of free Ukraine and a locked-down Russian Totalitarian Empire. Simultaneously, Donald Trump seems the probable next inhabitant of the White House. Riddle me those conundrums sans Thanatos, Steiner…
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the bcc’d emailing list.
References
Atkinson, S., Tomley, S. (Eds.). (2012). The psychology book: Big ideas simply explained. Dorling-Kindersley Limited.
Audi, R. (Ed.) (1998). The Cambridge dictionary of philosophy. Cambridge University Press.
Brinkmann, S. (2020). Psychology as a science of life. Theory & Psychology, 30(1), 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354319889186
Clark, A. (2016). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press.
Enders, G. (2015). Gut: The inside story of our body’s most underrated organ. Greystone Books.
Haidt, J. (2023, March 9). Why the mental health of liberal girls sank first and fastest: Evidence for Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis. https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com
Paul, A. M. (2021). The extended mind: The power of thinking outside the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Santer, N. Manago, A., & Bleisch, R. (2023). Narratives of the self in polymedia contexts: Authenticity and Branding in Generation Z. Qualitative Psychology, Vol 10, No. 1, 79-106.
Twenge, J. M. (2023, March 15). Academic pressure cannot explain the mental illness epidemic: It’s not the homework. It’s the phones. https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com
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