To know oneself, to find one’s place in the world: it becomes more and more difficult to solve this existential task. We are so many-sided, and we have so few reference points! How to distinguish yourself in the flickering of possible “I”?
Habitual rhythm, familiar surroundings, endless running in a circle “home-road-work-food-sleep”… All this is fine and goes on as usual, but where am I? What do I want? Does my life come down to this?
A few years ago, the German philosopher Richard David Precht published a book, a philosophical journey, that became an international bestseller. It is called “Who am I and how much of me, if I exist at all?”1.
The phrase in the title was once uttered by a friend of Precht while drunk. However, it is worth recognizing: this phrase perfectly conveys the strange feeling that many of us today are possessing. “Everything seems to be fine, but something is not right.”
“I have everything, but I understand that I am unhappy, and I don’t understand why,” psychotherapists around the world listen to such complaints every day. What’s happening?
How many me?
Transformations, rebirths, the multiplicity of “I” and the complete rejection of it are not new things for the Eastern worldview. European philosophy for thousands of years stood on the positions of the immutability and integrity of some basic, central essence of man.
Yes, and psychology “for most of the twentieth century, tried to find the essence of personality in stable and unchanging structures, attitudes, types and traits of character,” says psychologist Dmitry Leontiev. “However, dynamic structures are now coming to the fore, providing a combination of stability and variability of the individual. The key is the ability not so much to adapt to an unchanging environment, but to adequately respond to its variability, complexity and uncertainty.”
The idea of variability and multiplicity was also reflected in the therapeutic methods that were developed in the 1970s and 1980s. This is both an internal dialogue and psychosynthesis, during which the patient tries to hear his “subpersonalities”. In a word, these are attempts to “acquaint” the many fragments that seem to make up our “I”.
The XNUMXth century opened up opportunities for us to freely go beyond
An integral, understandable person, moving through life as if on rails, laid once and for all by the family, cultural and social environment – this person has remained in the past. “The XNUMXth century opened up opportunities for us to freely transcend class, estate, family and even gender restrictions,” notes psychologist François de Singly. “He also freed up a lot of time for all of us.”
Which we can spend, comprehending who we are after all – and who we would like to be.
Are psychologists to blame?
Psychology is partly responsible for our agonizing search for ourselves. To verify this, just go to any bookstore. A good third of the shelves are almost certainly occupied by books that encourage the reader to leave the comfort zone, set foot on the path of development, seek and find oneself.
However, Dmitry Leontiev notes that books devoted to the search and knowledge of oneself existed long before the fashion for “self-seeking”: “It’s just that earlier they were addressed to a narrow group of enlightened people.
But since about the beginning of the XNUMXth century, in connection with the growth of literacy, there has been an effect of simplification, adaptation of thoughts addressed to the minority to the requirements of mass culture.
Popular culture really contributed greatly to the interest in finding oneself. At least by the fact that, according to Dmitry Leontiev, unlike traditional culture, it does not help to reveal meanings, but arbitrarily assigns them.
“Wear red this season. Buy a car of such and such a brand. Be efficient. And why? Why not green, why this particular brand, why is it necessarily effective? There are no answers, but they are not required. And with the development of the consumer society, there are more and more such imposed meanings,” states Dmitry Leontiev.
It is impossible not to admit that the “well-fed zero” did a lot for the rapid growth of such designated meanings in Russia. This means that they gave a powerful impetus to the search for oneself and one’s own meanings.
Maybe our true destiny is to live on Rublyovka and fly to sales in Milan? Or, on the contrary, teach children in a rural school, be a volunteer or meditate in an ashram? What if there really is no “opposite” here?
Pursuit of meaning
The key word has already sounded, and this word is “meaning”. It is the search for meaning that, first of all, is the search for oneself, Dmitry Leontiev is sure: “The search for oneself is the search for what is significant for us in this world. This applies to other people, to work and other occupations, to the place of residence or stay. We can only find ourselves in what is important to us. And we can’t – in that which is indifferent to us, has no meaning for us. And all the supposedly stable features of our character and mental make-up, which we used to call the word “I”, can change along with a change in meanings.
Until about 2000, the concept of meaning was rejected by academic psychology. Now it has spawned a real boom in publications. More fundamental books on the problems of meaning have been published in the last five years than in the previous thirty.
“To use the brilliant metaphor of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, we can say that meaning is a divine knot that connects things together,” says Dmitry Leontiev. It is especially important to find meaning in times of economic and moral crises, such as the one we are experiencing today. However, crises partly make the task easier, carrying away into oblivion the husk of assigned meanings, which only yesterday seemed unconditional.
Both process and result
Modern psychology is increasingly inclined towards a concept that considers a person as a constantly changing and developing personality. This is not a “hidden, deep “I”, but an “I” that constantly creates itself, relying on all new life experiences and comprehending it,” explains Francois de Sengli.
He illustrates this statement with the experience of family psychology. Fifteen years ago, during a divorce, a husband and wife explained their decision something like this: “I thought that he was actually completely different” or “We are not suitable for each other.” Now it is much more common to hear: “I have changed” or “We are preventing each other from developing.”
By the way, for this reason, divorced spouses today are much more likely than before to maintain quite calm and even friendly relations after parting. Sociologists call this phenomenon “the logic of the road”, as opposed to a “frozen picture”.
Philosopher and psychoanalyst Elsa Godart compares the personality to an onion: “It is also covered with many layers and also has no core.”
Dmitry Leontiev does not fully agree with this: “The bulb is a too static image, and the personality is something that is in constant motion. After all, the meanings that determine our search for ourselves are also constantly changing.
Rather, we can say that personality is not only the result of our search for ourselves, but to the same extent the search process itself. Are there people who can find themselves once and for all? Perhaps they are, but they are hardly worth envying.
Knowing yourself, no one will remain the same as he was
“People with a very stable “I” are just those who are little concerned about finding themselves and self-knowledge. The one who is not indifferent to his own “I”, who thinks about it a lot and looks for himself, is simply doomed to change, – sums up Dmitry Leontiev. – This is a paradox that can be formulated in the spirit of ancient Greek aporias. Knowing yourself, no one will remain the same as he was. Therefore, having done the work of knowing ourselves, we will inevitably change – and we will have to do the work anew. And so on ad infinitum.”
1 R. Precht «Who am I – and if so, how many? A philosophical journey” (Goldmann Verlag, 2007).