Identity

Be yourself, everyone else is taken. Oscar Wilde

Who am I? Who are you?

Pretty simple questions really but perhaps not so easy to answer. Sometimes when we are asked these questions we wonder about the motivation of the one who asks…we consider their agenda in seeking that information. Even when we ask it of ourselves. I mean how often do we sit and contemplate the essence of ourselves? We might boldly state our beliefs, our opinions and our values…not necessarily verbally but through our actions and interactions with others. But does this constitute self-knowledge?

Sounds like some kind of existential crisis! It’s always an existential crisis…I’m a writer! But this query just bubbled up for two reasons.

Firstly, is the creation of some new characters. When I write I do create a backstory for the central players. Not necessarily a written one, but certainly a sense of them and occasionally I use an image to prompt my understanding of them.  I want to know them so that I can create a sense of authenticity in the way they develop, react to events and respond to the others around them. I know the importance of their childhood experiences, the success and failure of their relationships, their work, habits and traits. And if asked, I can readily describe the characters I’ve been working with in my work.

Take Lily O’Hara (from the Lily O’Hara Mystery Series) for example. She lost her parents before she was old enough to know what a parent was. Lived her life with her father’s siblings on Lake Road. As a child, teen and young adult she was self-reliant, lived in her head, made a few friends, was very musical and quite clever. Self-contained, content with a simple life and absolutely resolute in her refusal to ask about her past. She’s gentle unless feistiness is warranted. Falls in love with someone she respects, admires and who has great integrity. Lily values kindness, the environment, history (just not her own), cooking and music. She finds the idea of mothers bewildering and yet she craves the unconditional love that she images one might bestow. She wants to hope but finds it too nebulous a thing to manage.

And that is the cut down version. So easy to look at the character you create and answer the questions who is she?

Secondly, I recently heard a story about myself that I did not know. A part of the life I was too small to recall, and it made me wonder about the other gaps that might exist in my self-knowledge. If asked, who are you could I be as precise as I am with my characters? Could I be as confident in compiling the lists of traits? Events - I’m all over them, as I remember them. Places I’ve lived - not a problem. The people I love - no help needed. The things I value – a well-curated list. Physical description – tall and a most luxurious and neat hairstyle. (Please allow a modicum of delusion here).

But who am I? According to Freud self-knowledge is at risk of ‘distortion, delusion and even deception.’[1] So one might believe that they know who they are, but they could just be fooling themselves. Where to from there? Perhaps the myriad of personality tests might bring light to the conundrum. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator? Does this ring a bell? Most of us at some point had to dive into this self-reflection which at the end of I wondered if I’d been deluding myself either all my life or just during the test!

We could try the Big Five to check our levels of agreeableness and neuroticism. The 16PF to find our personality traits. Or the HEXACO to find if we are honest. The Enneagram…what motivates you. Perhaps we could resurrect the old Rorschach Inkblot test to check our emotional functioning. (I always see a bug or two old blokes fighting over a cup of tea!!) Amateur psychs I welcome your analysis. My personal favourite, The Eysenck Personality Inventory. Any test that is going to label me either sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic or melancholic is my kind of self-revelation. Particularly along that central access that divides the world into those who are stable and those who are neurotic.

Maybe we could lean on Carl Jung for a little self-discovery. The Jung archetypes test helps one find his/her/their persona (which is your mask), your shadow (the hidden and repressed traits), the anima/animus (opposite gender traits) and finally the self (the unified conscious and unconscious). He identifies hermits, shamans, mystics, heroes, caregivers, sages, magicians and jesters as some of the outstanding archetypal personality traits we can be tested for. (I think I’m a wise old man in most categories…hard not to be disappointed!)

But I’m not sure that all the testing in the world gives a greater insight into the answer. We can make lists of the work we have done, the places we have been and the things that mean much to us, what we can live with and what we can’t, things we detest and our deepest feelings and I’m not sure the answer is revealed in these either. Perhaps we answer it through the things we do in the world, the things we create, the light foot falls or the heavy stomping, the hands we held, the sorrow we felt, the lifting, the falling, the climb, the love we give out, the love we withhold? The answer might be a sentence, an essay or an entire encyclopaedia. Or a shrug of the shoulders. Or a psychological soup of testing outcomes (a phlegmatic, neurotic, introverted, INFP, old man magician).

Who am I? Who am I really? 

A work in progress.

Who looks outside, dreams: who looks inside, awakes.  Carl Jung

[1] https://www.philosophyoflife.org/jpl201306.pdf