Just don’t say you’ve never taken a selfie. And you don’t even know what it is? Marvelous. Because today it is one of the main attributes of life in the network. We asked psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin to explain why selfies have gained such popularity.
Perhaps the main feature of selfie lovers is their focus on other people. Those who actively take pictures of themselves do so in order to share these portraits on social networks, send them to each other, and collect feedback from friends. They film themselves in different poses, convey their mood with facial expressions, share important events. And all this – using the camera of a regular smartphone. Someone takes pictures of himself in the company of friends, someone – during an important event or meeting. Some admit that selfies are just a daily ritual for them, without any meaning. Although it certainly makes sense. It is the habit of constantly measuring the course of one’s life in such visual units that is of particular interest.
Way of self-expression
For those of us who, for some reason in everyday life, do not dare to show others our inner world in its entirety, a selfie gives such a chance. The phone camera becomes a safe medium through which they are able to open up, to show the full richness of their emotional life. It is not necessary to have a specific reaction – attention or approval. The idea itself, the fantasy is important: they understood me, they appreciated me. We all, one way or another, live in the space of our inner world.
The real world seems to us more multifaceted, multidimensional. By sending our photos, we include ourselves in this world and expand our inner world at the expense of the outer one. There are also elements of creativity. Finding a theme, a good expression, an angle – in any case, this requires a creative effort. Those who photograph themselves are trying to create something new through this image. Even when it comes to fitting into a certain trend or supporting a network flash mob.
False “I”
But contact with others, the desire to share oneself is not always exactly the goal pursued by those who are fond of selfies. In the word itself (from the English self – “I”) there is a certain parody, a game of oneself. This parody can expand the space of images of the “I”, but it can also form a kind of false “I”.
We no longer present ourselves to the world, but the image that we would like to show. Even when shooting ourselves in an unattractive way (without makeup, with disheveled hair, with a grimace on our face), we want it to fit into a certain trend, look relevant, even stylish in our own way. We begin to build our image based on our ideas about how our environment expects us to be. The selfie turns into an analogue of the childish false self, about which the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote. In opposition to the true “I”, the child creates an auxiliary personality structure in order to please his mother. But the development of the true “I” at the same time stops.
Confirmation of your existence
By distributing photos of ourselves in different situations, we kind of declare to the world: “I am. I exist”. We need the world to respond to us, to reflect our presence in it. Likes, comments – these are just confirmations. A small child becomes aware of his existence through the connection with his mother. For him, she is the whole world. If she does not speak to him, does not touch him, he begins to think that the world rejects him, he is not needed. And this is an alarming moment when such a scheme begins to play out already at a fairly adult age.
In fact, by obsessively sending out selfies, we are trying to reach out to the world. And the more we depend on the response, the more we begin to doubt our own self-sufficiency, we fall into dependence on “likes”.
Lack of real experience
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine a person who actively takes and uploads his pictures. And now he has not just a relationship, but a deep relationship. He begins to communicate actively, openly. Will he then pay as much attention to his network image? In the end, it cannot be said that the selfie phenomenon itself is somehow bad. The only question is what is it for us. If you are able to creatively realize yourself and love another person, you can afford to play with your “I” without falling into addiction.
Many creative people use selfies more as a tool. Recall the recent photos with the Pope. This is an attempt to attract young people, to show that Christianity is more open, modern. It is important to clearly imagine the boundaries where the demonstrative selfie ends and the real self begins – myself.
About the author: Andrey Rossokhin, Ph.D.