We are all composed of a variety of selves. For instance, we can be a parent self, a child self, a spouse self, a worker self, a friend self, etc. In each of these selves, there can be angry ones, compassionate ones, competitive, frightened, self-assured, and shy ones. We are different selves with each of our children. Some core selves seem to permeate all the other selves. Some people are uniformly compassionate, while others always carry a chip on their shoulder.
I started thinking about all my own selves when I decided to move into a retirement community because I knew I would have to invent some new selves while losing several older ones. For instance, I lost the collector self by giving away the many objects I had gathered over a lifetime, with the hopes of gaining a minimalist self with fewer possessions (which did not happen). I lost my housekeeper self, the one in charge of menus, grocery shopping, and meal preparations, but gained a self, free of those kinds of decisions. I lost a night-driving self to a bus-taking-to-evening-events self.
The boss at work self is different than the self at the dinner table at home. One is decisive and commanding, but would be inappropriate with a spouse; if we did not leave that self at work, there would be problems in the marriage.
I used to teach situational leadership, first proposed by Ken Blanchard. A boss can be a hard taskmaster in one situation and a caring hand-holding coach in another. The same person can have a shy self in one situation and an assertive self in another. The important thing to remember is that there is an inner observer in all of us who decides which self will be right for each situation. It is a little like a director who gives out roles to the actors in the scenes of life. Freud called it the ego. Robert Assogioli, who first described the notion of various sub-personalities in 1920, called that director the transpersonal self.
I am aware of some of my more prominent selves: the teacher, the helper, the writer. An interesting exercise is to name each of your most prominent selves and list some of the desirable and undesirable characteristics of each of them. For example, my academic self can be useful in a situation when knowledge of a subject is relevant, but can be detrimental in another when I might sound like a “know-it-all.” Or the joker part of me can be a lot of fun, but can also poke fun inappropriately and hurt someone. Some of our selves are star players; others are bit players that can cause problems.
How often we have said or done something we later regret and wonder how we could have said that or acted that way. It was one of our selves who acted impulsively without prior approval of our observer/director. Part of our upbringing, as well as part of being civilized, is learning to control that self who can be not only destructive to others, but destructive to our life. Freud had a name for that impulsive self who acts on emotions and not on reason; he called it the Id.
Eric Berne had a different nomenclature for the selves. He categorized people into parent, child, and adult. Carl Jung wrote about “animus,” the man inside every woman and “anima,” the woman inside every man. Erving Polster wrote a book, “A Population of Selves: A Therapeutic Exploration of Personal Diversity,” which explores our various selves with an emphasis on identification and acceptance of the various aspects of personhood that inhabit us. Some of the selves within us we like are proud of; others we may be embarrassed by. Some may even surprise us when they pop up unexpectedly, such as getting overly upset about someone’s inconsequential remark.
I like the multiple selves idea as this does not limit us to a few categories, but to an infinite number of players who change throughout our lifetime. I like to think of aging as growing or changing on a continuum, sometimes even hourly, often on a daily basis, and certainly yearly—shedding no-longer-useful selves and acquiring new, more appropriate selves, not only appropriate to one’s age, but to the environment in which one lives. In other words, we grow by letting go of some younger selves and acquiring new, more mature ones. I just shed my feeling-invulnerable self (when I fell recently) and replaced it with a more cautious self. I’m not yet well-acquainted with that more-aware-of-my-movements self; I don’t particularly like it because it is also a slower self, but it is a necessary new self that I need to allow in.
Some selves, of course, remain constant (for instance, a curious self), but what I find exciting is the possibility of shedding the unwanted selves and adding new ones, and thus reinventing ourselves, forever growing wiser, forever becoming more conscious, forever encouraging our inner observer/director to take better charge.
Natasha Josefowitz is the author of more than 20 books. She resides at the White Sands Retirement Community in La Jolla. Copyright © 2016. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.