EP. 34 LGBTQ Part 1: Self-Identity Limitations - Is Self A Socially Constructed Product

Episode Notes: 

1. What do I, as a Christian, believe about Self-Identity, and are there limits?
2. Orders of Meaning (Johnson, Foundations of Soul Care, 2007).  

The Biological Order:  “...the platform for all higher psychological functioning” (Johnson, p. 336).  

• Genetic determinants (i.e., height, eye color, male/female)
• Pre-natal development
• Neuronal maturation
• Neuronal structures
• Brain-structures

The Psychosocial Order:  By psychosocial order, we are referring to the immaterial dynamic structures that originate in social interaction (Johnson, p. 337).  

• Sensations
• Perceptions 
• Stimulus-Responses
• Imaginations
• Concepts
• Schemas

Summary:

• It is these two strata that sociological and psychological research on human nature, identity, and self has exclusively focused. 
• Logical positivism dismisses anything that cannot be measured or empirically validated through the Scientific Method.  Therefore, the sciences of the self are limited to these two strata.
• The self becomes the ultimate reference point.

1. Limits to Self-Identity As I See Them (these 1st two strata are informative)
2. The Ontological Crisis—a crisis in my sense of being.  
3. If all that exists is the Biological and Psychosocial strata then there can be no claim of an actual self. Who you are and who I am are merely mental constructions formulated and organized through our neural networks as we engage in our social environments.  When I, Jeremy Lelek, was born, I did not possess a self.  I was simply a human with the potential to become a self.  There was no inner “I” to discover or an inner “I” knowable by God, rather, who I am today is a complete cognitive construction.  In other words, existence precedes essence.  If this sounds far-fetched, consider the conclusions of the experts.
4.  Dr. Daphna Oyserman, Kristen Elmore, and George Smith of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan wrote,  “Self and identity theories converge in asserting that self and identity are mental constructs, that is, something represented in memory” (p.75)...They also assert that the assumption of a stable self is “belied by the malleability, context-sensitivity, and dynamic construction of the self as a mental construct.  Identities are not fixed markers people assume them to be but are instead dynamically constructed in the moment” (p. 70).  
5. Sheldon Stryker, Indiana University, Bloomington writes, Identities are self-cognitions tied to roles and, through roles, to positions in organized social relationships.  
6. Steven Hitlin, University of Iowa writes, The self is a socially constructed product of symbolic actors interacting with social environments.
7. Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology, the University of Bristol and former Research Fellow at Cambridge University writes, This core self, wandering down the path of development, enduring things that life throws at us is, however, the illusion.  Like every other aspect of human development, the emergence of the self is epigenetic—an interaction of the genes in the environment (p. 114). 

Summary:  If self is an illusion, then this leaves us all in a very uncertain predicament.  If, as the famed psychologist, William James has said, we have as many selves as the people with whom we interact, and if we are continually forced to reconstruct ourselves based on cultural or contextual situations, and if we are simply material beings driven by natural selection, then we exist in the reality that we are mere cogs in a machine genetically motivated by ultimate survival.  We are destined to exist in an illusion as though it ultimately matters.  

1.  The Existential Crisis—The Crisis of Stability and Meaning
2. Self-Identity is innately egocentric and individualistic and tends to follow the individualization thesis which, according to Dr. Rob Whitley in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, “posits that people in post-modern societies are becoming increasingly detached and disembedded from traditional institutions, including extended family, religious congregations, trade unions, and local communities.  These ‘mediating structures’ are posited to provide fellowship, identity, and meaning to life. 
3. While Dr. Whitley mentions some benefits to the post-modern ethos, such as new freedoms for formerly restricted groups, his article cites various experts in the fields of sociology, philosophy and psychology who articulate grave concerns regarding the collision of post-modernism and egocentrism.  These concerns include:
4. The emergence of the idea of the “empty self” “devoid of meaningful content and connections, a self that is filled up by consumerism and other activities specific to postmodernity.
5.  A diminished capacity to securely navigate risk and unpredictability leading to a sense of despair.
6. Rise of substance abuse, personality disorders, and associated para-suicide in Western societies.
7. Acts of self-harm as a means to fill the “empty self”
8. Developing anorexia and bulimia as a means to forge a distinctive identity.
9. Whitley concludes that in the West especially, “…individuals must engage in constant self-interrogation vis-à-vis day-to-day living to ensure that their current social roles and identities are commensurate with wider values and appropriate changing contexts” (p. 356).

Summary:  It seems that one element of the new age in which people are seeking identity within the biological and psychosocial strata exclusively is that many of them are struggling to find a genuine sense of meaning and a secure sense of self.  As I read through various articles citing similar concerns as mentioned above the words of the celebrated French existential philosopher, Jean Paul Sarte, came to mind: “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”  Or T.S. Eliot’s chilling poem, Hollow Men, in which he penned:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw.  Alas!

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;…

1. The 3rd Crisis brings us into Dr. Johnson’s Ethical Order—What are our values?
2.  The Psychological Crisis—What is my epistemology?
3. If Self-Identity is simply a mental construct, then by what standard do I judge my constructs as being true or false, accurate or inaccurate?  How do I know what I know?  Is society my standard?  Is self my standard?  How do I know either of these are correct?  This not only creates a problem for the individual person, but it creates tension for the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and sociology as well.   For example, the ethics of psychology and counseling encourage what is called a value-neutral stance when working with others.  Bringing one’s personal value judgments into the process of therapy would be unethical.  Let’s consider the psychological struggle this creates for the individual as well as the practitioner seeking to help him/her.     
4. Body Dysmorphic Di...