SELF TYPES & THEIR DIFFERENCES ACROSS GENERATIONS
AND THE LIFE-C YCLE
With modernization, the quest for knowledge of oneself has become a major preoccupation for many Americans. "Who am I?" "Know Thyself" and "Unto thine own self be true"--Such are the themes of wall plaques, self-help manuals, and religious maxims. When surveying older individuals' reflections on the whole of life, one 83-year-old nun told one of my student researchers:
I would tell any young person to be your own self. Have a real good idea of your own strengths--they usually take care of the weaknesses. Find out where you fit in and what makes you happy. If you drift from one thing to another you will never be satisfied. If you don't find the part of yourself that will give you fulfillment you'll never be satisfied or content. You have to learn about and live with your true self.
Observed Helen Merrell Lynd, "the search for identity has become as strategic in our time as the study of sexuality was in Freud's time" (On Shame and the Search for Identity. New York : Science Editions, 1961:14). But what does this all mean? In part, it's our peculiar cultural obsession to search for a self that we supposedly don't know. It also involves the extreme individualism of American culture.
The sense of identity is important to both human psychology and to sociology. Not only does having a sense of self provide the sense of having free will ("This is who I am and this is what I want to do, therefore I am going to do it despite what others say") but it is also a basis of social control ("We Smiths are an industrious people and I am not about to let my people down by goofing off.").
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF SELFHOOD
A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describ ...