Do we have more than one "self"?

I have had similar thoughts before, and even pictured these different facets of myself as different "characters" with their own unique outfits etc to distinguish them in my mind. I tried developing some philosophy around that idea, drawing a parallel between those different "personas" (as I termed them) and the individual persons in a society, where just as social peace and well-being consists in the individuals that make it up getting along well, so too I thought that mental health could consist of these "personas" getting along well. I never got far on that idea though and eventually dropped it from my philosophical work.

I think it is well-established in psychology that people automatically behave in different ways ("wear different faces" or "hats") around different people or in different contexts, and become more acutely aware of that when context collide (if for example a young person is both around their rebellious friends and in the presence of a respected elder authority... behaving how they'd behave around the friends feels wrong in the presence of the authority, but behaving how they'd behave around the authority feels wrong around the friends).

Reply to TheMadMan

The entity is the self. The personality is the distinctive character of the self. Because of our first-person periphery most of the self lay hidden from view for most of our lives, and thus we are left to fill in the blanks of self-hood. But when others talk about us or consider us as selves they refer to the entity, giving us a more objective view that we should never forget.

Reply to NOS4A2 Yes, when I say selves Im talking about the periphery and not the cetral entity. But I wonder if the observation and understanding of the peripheral selves leads one to find that real deep self.

Reply to TheMadMan

Good ol' Walt comes in handy once again!

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
From Song of Myself, Whitman

I get how it can sometimes feel like we are mamy selves, but I see it more like a human is a rich and complex being, responding to a rich and complex world (as well as to other rich and complex beings) and so you're not going to act or feel or think consistently all of the time.

Reply to TheMadMan

Great question! Short answer is yes (to a greater or lesser degree), because we are always changing.

Case in point; ever ask yourself, when looking back from a past happenstance "...why did I do that..." and come away with no answer? You are not the same as you were... .

Of course, many things change when it comes to human motivations, goals, ways of being, physiological changes, etc..

Maybe one other obvious question is: should one embrace or even welcome change, or resist it? If one believes that at birth, we are born 'primarily' (with exceptions) with a 'blank slate' it would suggest a hopeful anticipation of change... .

I usually like to think of myself as a member of a "counsil" that decides what my body and brain does. I have an "office" which is my mind where I can think of whatever I want whenever I want, I can't always convince the counsil to do exactly what I want though :/. You have to keep the other members satisfied or else they will be uncooperative. Other members are different urges, though I sometimes reduce it to just one other member "desire"

Also I find that most of the time, the other members tend to come around to the way you view things if you just leave them alone for a while. Aka, the source of the conflict is usually you trying to hasten or dictate the other members' decisions.

I sometimes play around with the idea that these other members are other "consciousnesses" each with their own mental life (office) and that's where they come up with their ideas. Just a fanciful thought

Recently I wonder if I am a member at all or just a "mediator". Someone who makes sure the other members are satisfied and the discussions flow as smoothly as possible but who has no desires or interests of his own. Because it feels as though these other members dicatate my likes and dislikes, so if I am to try to do anything I am just serving one of them at the expense of the other. This is if I consider "myself" to be seperate from my desires

I find that people change their conception of what "themselves" is depending on the circumstance. When achieving a success, the work, the intention, the willpower, the desire was all "them" but when failing, "they" had the best intentions but "Didn't have enough willpower" for example, suddenly excluding "willpower" from their definitions.

I think dwelling on the definition of self usually has one running around in circles with no resolution

Reply to TheMadMan, at least all the others are taken, you can't be them.

When you think of "self" as mind, experiences, all that, then "self" is temporal, process-like.
So, maybe "self" is inherently mutable?

Read Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. One of the favourite books of the 60’s counter-culture, and all about this.

‘I contain multitudes’ ~ Walt Whitman.

Less than one.

Reply to TheMadMan Do we have more than one "self"?

I can recommend listening to a podcast from 'Hidden Brain, 'the empathy gap'. Shows how we behave very different under different emotional states.

Depersonalization can be an illness, like the kind psychiatry does (anesthetics like ketamine surprisingly help). There is also the Buddhist method of it, which is healthy and normal

Reply to Wayfarer Another great story is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I have been fascinated by this book from a very young age.

Quoting TheMadMan

I have recently found myself being more aware of my mood swings, changes of my states of mind and I felt as if this "I" one identifies with, is but a collection of selves that keeps getting in front of the wheel of the car that is Me - the entity - caused by life events.

In my current model, consciousness is an emergent 3rd entity that forms as a dynamic standing wave resonating with our internal and external configurations as its boundary conditions. I am also leaning towards our internal cognitive consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our social consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our mind-body consciousness. So, Kant's cogito 'thinking' is far too simplistic, and misleading, to reason on what/if the internal "I" consciousness exists simply by virtue of his social consciousness questioning it, b/c they are possibly (likely) independent consciousness states, in my model. So, any reasoning applied to them might be like comparing apples to oranges to conclude bananas.

In this model, if you try to be all things to all people your social 'I' may create many alter-egos to minimize the discord in each social context, often at the expense of the hiding drives/needs from our mind-body consciousness. Then the our internal consciousness has its personality and purpose in life might get complete suppressed/ignored, which often results in a sense of emptiness, being 'lost', no meaning in life, etc. Unifying these different emanations (faces) of ourselves into a more coherent state of being and action that best aligns all 3, should bring about a greater sense of peace, happiness, and meaning to one's mind/body consciousness.

Intrapsychic self.

"Eleanor Rigby
Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?"

I can't decide if it's the selfs that change guards, or else the self gets into different moods, so different from each other, that the self's own mother won't recognise the self.