To be or not
self and authenticity, identity and ambivalence
pp. 263-281
in: Daniel K. Lapsley, F. C. Power (eds), Self, ego, and identity, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of one's soul? Jesus's dictum can be translated into contemporary idiom simply by changing one word: What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of one's self? Indeed, in the moral discourse of Western thought, some sense of selfhood may be the nearest empirically available basis for a sense of personal transcendence (Harre, 1984). Surging social scientific attention given to the concept of self after its near abandonment during the positivistic heyday suggests that the phenomenon to which it refers may be a historical and cultural universal (cf. Marsella, DeVos, & Hsu, 1985). In the modern context, however, we find the construct identity working as a competing catch-all scientific and folk term to refer to what we take to be the unique human experience of self as selfconsciously known (Weigert, Teitge, & Teitge, 1986). We briefly discuss self and identity in order as we present a perspective on contemporary self-understanding.