Is there more to our identity beyond the one we perform? Or are we just pure act?
I always struggled with how I presented myself to the world. Every day, I would question which side of me I would be showing others, deciding how I would react to each situation and how I would like to be perceived. Far from feeling inadequate in my environment or trying to please everyone, my chameleon-like change of personal expression was an adaptation mechanism. It´s not hard to see that this adaptation was clearly dependent on the person I was communicating with, something I´m sure we have all seen ourselves do. Yet I wondered if this seemingly effortless behavior went deeper than mere compliance. The different versions of myself did not differ drastically from each other; they all branched from the same trunk, my true self. So I wasn´t exactly lying; all of those versions were me in some way. I just seemed to only show others some pieces of the puzzle. Different parts to everyone, but never the complete composition. Little did I know that the struggle and inability I felt to communicate to the world the real me, the one formed by my beliefs, ambitions, fears, vulnerabilities, memories, and experiences; the one I knew I was; was not only happening to me.
It wasn´t until I came across Carl Rogers’ work that I finally glimpsed the so longed-for shared-experienced recognition. In the Humanistic Theory of the self, Rogers narrates about the multiple layers of self-experience (Rogers, 1959). Self-experience. What a beautiful, well-rounded term. Yes. That´s what I was struggling with, the communication of how I experienced myself and how others experienced me. Well, more like how I could not find a way to make others experience myself the way I did. In his theory, Roger talks about four specific layers: the public self, the version of you shown to others, shaped by social roles and expectations; the ideal self, the person you want to be, shaped by aspirations and goals; the actual self, the person you believe you are in the present; and the private self, the deepened, authentic, sometimes unconscious self only fully known to you.
So, maybe, the constant and conscious expression of the self feels so complex and helpless because we are not only trying to communicate our true self. We are also communicating our goals, desires, and the person we would like to be. Others can’t help but see us through the lenses of social schema, easing the information process by creating a simpler, more straightforward version of us. Together with language, social scripts, and cultural expectations, they compile unavoidable obstacles that impair the “intact” transformation of the intangible concept (only known to us) into a decipherable message. Self-expression, then, involves transformation. Transformation of the message, adapted to a medium, and then shared. So, we will always express a “changed” form of our thoughts, our perception to others, in order to make it understandable.
But I wonder, is this transformation bidirectional? Does the process of self-expression itself change us in reverse? What if the adaptation mechanism mentioned at the beginning started coming out so automatically that we could not discern anymore between the adaptation and the real “me”? Does the constant practice of this habit blur the line between the true self and the public self? I guess there is no easy answer but the one that lies within ourselves.
Performance is, therefore, our only way of expressing the self. We will never be able to communicate our private selves, the one true to us, to others. It will always be jailed inside, given only the opportunity to feel the air of the outer world by bits, letting itself be seen playing a role in the performance we present to others. So, if we are the only key bearers to access that inner world, the only ones to nourish it, then self-discovery and self-love are the most valuable mantras we can live by. Spending time with ourselves, discovering and loving ourselves, in a way no one else can. Because you are the only person guaranteed to meet the purest version of yourself.
Even now, attempting to portray my thoughts and experiences into a column is changing the message; it’s an inevitable transformative process, both for the recipient and the issuer. Forcing me to word a feeling, an ethereal and abstract compound of experiences, into something tangible.
It saddens me to think of an existence without pure expression of the self to the outer world. It can be lonely and infuriating. But could this heartbreaking realization end on a positive note? Public performance is an art and, by nature of us being social animals, is what makes social life possible, rather than a sign of fakeness and lack of authenticity. We use performances to communicate.
So maybe the question isn’t whether identity exists beyond performance, but rather: can we embrace performance as the bridge between selves? If we accept performance as an innate part of the self, then each act becomes not a betrayal of the private self, but an invitation for others to glimpse a part of it – however transformed, however fleeting.
References
- Rogers, C. R. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships: As Developed in the Client-Centered Framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Formulations of the Person and the Social Context (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw Hill.
Photo by Cynthia Young
Is there more to our identity beyond the one we perform? Or are we just pure act?
I always struggled with how I presented myself to the world. Every day, I would question which side of me I would be showing others, deciding how I would react to each situation and how I would like to be perceived. Far from feeling inadequate in my environment or trying to please everyone, my chameleon-like change of personal expression was an adaptation mechanism. It´s not hard to see that this adaptation was clearly dependent on the person I was communicating with, something I´m sure we have all seen ourselves do. Yet I wondered if this seemingly effortless behavior went deeper than mere compliance. The different versions of myself did not differ drastically from each other; they all branched from the same trunk, my true self. So I wasn´t exactly lying; all of those versions were me in some way. I just seemed to only show others some pieces of the puzzle. Different parts to everyone, but never the complete composition. Little did I know that the struggle and inability I felt to communicate to the world the real me, the one formed by my beliefs, ambitions, fears, vulnerabilities, memories, and experiences; the one I knew I was; was not only happening to me.
It wasn´t until I came across Carl Rogers’ work that I finally glimpsed the so longed-for shared-experienced recognition. In the Humanistic Theory of the self, Rogers narrates about the multiple layers of self-experience (Rogers, 1959). Self-experience. What a beautiful, well-rounded term. Yes. That´s what I was struggling with, the communication of how I experienced myself and how others experienced me. Well, more like how I could not find a way to make others experience myself the way I did. In his theory, Roger talks about four specific layers: the public self, the version of you shown to others, shaped by social roles and expectations; the ideal self, the person you want to be, shaped by aspirations and goals; the actual self, the person you believe you are in the present; and the private self, the deepened, authentic, sometimes unconscious self only fully known to you.
So, maybe, the constant and conscious expression of the self feels so complex and helpless because we are not only trying to communicate our true self. We are also communicating our goals, desires, and the person we would like to be. Others can’t help but see us through the lenses of social schema, easing the information process by creating a simpler, more straightforward version of us. Together with language, social scripts, and cultural expectations, they compile unavoidable obstacles that impair the “intact” transformation of the intangible concept (only known to us) into a decipherable message. Self-expression, then, involves transformation. Transformation of the message, adapted to a medium, and then shared. So, we will always express a “changed” form of our thoughts, our perception to others, in order to make it understandable.
But I wonder, is this transformation bidirectional? Does the process of self-expression itself change us in reverse? What if the adaptation mechanism mentioned at the beginning started coming out so automatically that we could not discern anymore between the adaptation and the real “me”? Does the constant practice of this habit blur the line between the true self and the public self? I guess there is no easy answer but the one that lies within ourselves.
Performance is, therefore, our only way of expressing the self. We will never be able to communicate our private selves, the one true to us, to others. It will always be jailed inside, given only the opportunity to feel the air of the outer world by bits, letting itself be seen playing a role in the performance we present to others. So, if we are the only key bearers to access that inner world, the only ones to nourish it, then self-discovery and self-love are the most valuable mantras we can live by. Spending time with ourselves, discovering and loving ourselves, in a way no one else can. Because you are the only person guaranteed to meet the purest version of yourself.
Even now, attempting to portray my thoughts and experiences into a column is changing the message; it’s an inevitable transformative process, both for the recipient and the issuer. Forcing me to word a feeling, an ethereal and abstract compound of experiences, into something tangible.
It saddens me to think of an existence without pure expression of the self to the outer world. It can be lonely and infuriating. But could this heartbreaking realization end on a positive note? Public performance is an art and, by nature of us being social animals, is what makes social life possible, rather than a sign of fakeness and lack of authenticity. We use performances to communicate.
So maybe the question isn’t whether identity exists beyond performance, but rather: can we embrace performance as the bridge between selves? If we accept performance as an innate part of the self, then each act becomes not a betrayal of the private self, but an invitation for others to glimpse a part of it – however transformed, however fleeting.
References
- Rogers, C. R. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality, and Interpersonal Relationships: As Developed in the Client-Centered Framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science. Formulations of the Person and the Social Context (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw Hill.
Photo by Cynthia Young
