Is Your Self Truly Yours? Me, I: Social Control, Authenticity (South East European University, SEEU)

So, there was this school, this school of course was German, started in Germany, the guy named Wundt, W-U-N-D-T, Wundt. Wundt created a laboratory and studied people the way we study today mice or rats or chimpanzees or politicians, you know. So he studied people that way in a laboratory. He studied memory. He studied many mental functions and he said, it's a machine. I didn't see anything. I didn't see any spark. I didn't see any godly, you know. It's a machine, it's just a machine.

And consequently, after Wundt, there was this school of, this biological school. That school that says that human beings are genetically programmed and determined by biology, their lifespan development is preordained, and they develop in stages, and they cannot help it. There's nothing you can do about it.

So this was a deterministic school.

There is an equivalent in religion, Calvinism. Calvinism is a kind of strand of Protestantism. And in Calvinism there's something called predestination. Predestination means you think you have free will, but actually you don't. God has decided what will happen to you long before you were born, and to the very day you die. You're totally predetermined and predestined.

So that's the religious equivalent of the biological schools of psychology.

Now the biological schools of psychology did not end with the Germans in the 19th century. They continued well into the 60s and 70s.

We have, for example, behaviorism. Behaviorism is essentially a biological school. Because it says human beings are machines. You give them a stimulus, they give you a response. Stimulus response, machines. That's all. It's like clicking on a keyboard.

So behaviorism is a biological school. And even today we have biological schools.

For example, neuroscience. In neuroscience we believe that people are fully determined by activities in the brain and by substances in the brain, the biochemistry of the brain, neurotransmitters and so on, and activities, electrical and chemical in the brain.

So there is this belief that we are the brain. Completely wrong, by the way. But never mind.

There is this belief that we are the brain if we just study the brain. If theoretically we could build a supercomputer, which would simulate the brain to perfection, then we would understand human beings to the core and to the end. And we wouldn't need to study anything else.

This is a biological school.

The other school is nurture.

That other school says essentially the environment, your relationships, other people, your experiences, your memories, your traumas, all these determine what you become. You become through interaction with the environment.

So these were the environmental schools. And to this very day, we have this debate of nature versus nurture.

Back to Mr. Mead, Mr. Mead was adamantly opposed to the biological schools. This is the biological schools and nonsense.

He believed that like the sense of self and core identity are determined not by biology, but by sociology.

There's a good reason for that. He was a sociologist. He was not a psychologist.

So he believed that other people determine who you are and who you become.

Now this is very interesting because something like 60 years later, 50 or 60 years later, there was a school in psychology known as object-relations school. And they said the same thing.

Object-relations schools like Melanie Klein, like Gantry, like Ferber, they said exactly the same thing.

They said, we don't exist alone. We exist because we interact with other people. We are the sum total, the aggregation, the conglomeration of every interaction we ever had with other people.

In other words, if we were to be isolated from other people, we would never develop a self. We would never have a sense of identity if we were taken away from society.

It is a society that gives us the sense of existence, continuity, and idiosyncratic identity. Identity is unique to us. That comes from society, not from inside. It's not coming from inside. It's relational. It's a result of relationship.

And that's exactly what Mead said, actually, 50 or 60 years before object relations.

Now, why am I mentioning this?

Because as you study psychology, you go deeper and deeper into psychology. You get an MA, PhD, whatever.

You will discover an amazing thing.

Psychology is the only field that I know of, where people keep repeating the same ideas and the same concepts, time and again, claiming to discover something new, when it's actually not new at all.

I am not aware of a single new idea in psychology in the past 100 years at least. Everything in psychology is recycled, like recycling plastics. You have an idea 100 years ago, then 50 years later someone comes with the same idea, calls it a different name, gives it a different label, and says, I discovered something new.

And then it becomes very famous because he or she become very famous because he discovered something new, because everyone forgot that 50 years before someone else said exactly the same thing.

So you will hear many ideas that keep coming again and again and again in various disguises, various camouflages throughout the ages, throughout the ages in psychology.

And it's a very unfortunate feature of psychology. It implies that psychologists don't bother to go deep. They don't bother to study history. They don't bother to read books.

For example, I bet with you 100 to 1 that if we take 10 psychologists here, not one of them has read William James. 100 to 1, I will bet to you. Any money you put, I will put 100 times. Not one of them read William James.

So what will happen?

Because they are not aware of William James. They will rediscover many ideas of William James, and they would think that they invented these ideas. And this even has a name in clinical psychology. This has a name. When you think you discovered something new, and when you claim that you discovered something new, simply because you're ignorant of previous.

So this is known as recency bias, for those of you who want to go deeper.

Okay, the theory of the social self of George Herbert Mead, essentially a forerunner, precursor of object relations theories.

He said that we become who we are in three stages. The language stage, the play stage and the game stage.

And again, for example, the play stage, which was discovered fully, described fully by Mead. Mead described the game stage, which was discovered fully, described fully by Mead. Mead described the game stage in detail and so on and so forth.

Seventy years later, someone came with exactly the same idea and called it role theory.

So, role theory is actually the play stage in Mead's work. They are identical. There's no difference whatsoever. But it was rediscovered because no one is reading Mead anymore. Simply.

It's a very, very sad situation. This never happens in physics. I'm a physicist. Never happens in physics. I would never dream to say, oh, I discovered something new before I made thorough research of the literature, because I would look like an idiot, you know.

But in psychology, this happens every, twice a week.

Okay. So, language, play, and game. Mead suggested that we start to evolve a self.

So first of all, before we proceed, when I tell you that the self evolves through language, play, and game, what am I telling you actually?

That we are not born with the self. That the self is the outcome of processes. It's not something you're born with.

So here, Mead was suggesting that the self is totally social. We are born with zero self, and as we interact with each other, starting with mother, then father, then teachers, then you know, as we interact with each other, the self emerges.

So self is what we call an epiphenomenal. It is an emergent phenomenon. It emerges from something and does not exist before.

So this is the big difference between object-relations schools and Mead. Object-relations schools say that the baby is born with an ego. Baby is born with a self. But it's very fragmented, it's broken. These are called ego nuclei, and it's very primitive. And so the interactions with other people make it more developed, but baby is born with the self.

Mead did not agree. Mead said that we have zero self and it evolved.

So the first stage is language.

Mead's definition of language is very special.

When I ask you what is language, you would say words. Language is words.

Mead said that any interaction with other people, any type of interaction is language. Let's say if you make a gesture, it's language. If you use a word, it's language. Any way you interact with other people is actually language. If we make a sound, anything is language.

So he said language is the first thing, and it allows you to interact with other people. It allows you to reach out to other people.

Then people react to you always. There's always some kind of reaction.

Even if you're a baby, super small, tiny baby. Even then, you smile at mommy, yeah, and mommy feeds you.

So there is no situation where you use language, including gestures, facial expressions and so on. There's no situation where you use language and there's no reaction. There's always a reaction.

So he said that is the foundation of interactivity, of interaction.

By using language in the extended form, we actually trigger people or stimulate people to react to us and then we grasp the concept of action reaction. We grasp the concept of interactivity.

And it says we learn in life to convey everything via language. We convey attitudes, we convey emotions, we convey preferences, we convey wishes. Everything is mediated via language.

But language starts at age zero when the baby uses gestures and facial expressions and immediately gets a reaction and the baby says, wow, it's very nice this new idea. I can use language and I can make people around mereact to me. That's nice. I should try it more often. And that's how language develops.

And it leads to what he calls the play stage.

And the play stage, as the name implies, is about role playing, about role playing, pretension, expressing expectations from other people, and so on so forth.

And he says that this is a very critical phase.

He says when you start to play with other people, when you engage in play, and in a minute I will explain what is play, but when you engage in play, he says, you are beginning to see other people's point of view.

You cannot, by the way, play any game without seeing the other person's point of view. I can prove it to you easily.

Imagine we play chess. When we play chess, I have to take into account your point of view what you're planning to do, which moves you're going to make, even what is your mood. I have to take this into account.

There is no game that does not take the other person into account.

So the second you begin to play a game, you are forced if you want to play it efficaciously, if you want to win or if you want to benefit from the game, you are forced to take the other person into account.

And this is, of course, empathy. This is empathy develops via games.

When we play games with people, we must empathize with them. Otherwise, the game will stop.

Also, other people, if you don't take them into account, they will just walk away and the game will stop.

Imagine that I play chess with you, but I completely ignore your moves. I move my pieces and so on. You don't exist. I completely, you move your pawn, I do whatever I want, and not reactive to you.

At some point you'll say, well, who is this idiot? And you would walk away.

So the game will stop. The game forces you to develop, in effect, empathy.

And the game also has rules.

So games take the other person into account, and games obey rules.

To obey rules means to be a member of society. When you're a member of society, you obey rules.

So it says, playing games is a preparation for society.

So we are now in the play stage. We started off as babies. We learned to use language.

After that, we learn to verbalize language. We learn to use words and it's working. We get other people to do what we want. We manipulate other people using language. We manipulate the environment using language. We manipulate the environment using language. We convey our wishes.

So language is one hell of a thing. It's beautiful.

Next thing, we learn to play games.

And there is a role theory. Role theory.

Role theory says that the way you behave is not determined internally. The way you behave is not determined internally. The way you behave is not determined from the inside.

The way you behave is determined by society.

And that is a debatable contention. It's a debatable argument.

I would tend to disagree. I would tend to disagree. I would tend to disagree.

I think in some cases the way you behave is determined from the inside and you ignore society.

I don't think you can generalize and say that all your behaviors are determined by society.

For example, if you go to the toilet, I don't think that's determined by society.

Well, depends what you do in the toilet.

But generally speaking, if you go to the toilet, you need to do whatever you need to do, that is definitely not determined by society, that is determined by biology.

But if you, for example, have a fight with someone who is significant to you, you have a fight, it could be socially determined, but in most cases it's determined from the inside.

You had a fight because you got angry, or you had a fight because you were depressed, or you had a fight. So this is determined from the inside.

So I reject the premise of role theory that all our social behaviors are determined from the outside.

But role theory claims that we play roles. We play roles, and the role tells us what to do. And we play multiple roles. And these multiple roles don't have to be compatible. You could have multiple roles that contradict each other.

Let me give you an example. You are the President of the United States. That's a role. You're playing the role of President of the United States. There are rules on how to play the role of President of the United States. You're also the most powerful men in the world as President of the United States.

Then you wake up in the morning and you have COVID-19. Okay? You go to the hospital. In the hospital, you're not President of the United States. In the hospital, you're a patient. Your role changes.

Suddenly, instead of being the most powerful men in the United States, they are the most helpless men in the hospital, from power to total absence of power, just by playing a role.

You could have chosen, of course, to not go to the hospital. The minute you decide to not go to the hospital, you reject the role of a patient and you remain the most powerful man in the world, a woman in the world, because you rejected the role.

So we play all kinds of roles.

For example, you are playing now the role of a student. That's the role you're playing. I'm playing the role of a teacher. Marian is playing the role of a cameraman. We're all playing roles.

And the roles we play are very strict because there are rules. They're rules on how to behave and how to not behave.

For example, it's very unlikely that Marian will come all the way over here and slap me in the face.

I take this back. It's actually quite likely.

But that's an example of role playing. Role's limit behaviors, roles dictate behaviors.

Okay. So, playing roles help us, this helps us to exchange things.

We can exchange words, we can exchange words, we can exchange goods, we can exchange services. All exchange depends on playing roles.

If you meet someone and he doesn't say anything, you meet someone right now. Right now, someone enters a class, sits here, is not one of you? I don't know who he is, just comes and sits.

You would feel extremely uncomfortable because there is no role defined here. You don't know who this guy is. He may be a serial killer. Maybe someone Marian sent to get rid of me finally.

So we don't know who this guy is. We don't know the role of this guy.

So role playing and role theory, role theory says that role playing helps us to exchange things and also to regulate the social environment and to create an interdependence.

The minute we play roles, we force other people to play their roles.

I'll give you an example. If I'm a patient and I go to a hospital, I am forcing the doctor to be a doctor.

I cannot enter the hospital and say, hello, I have COVID-19, and the doctor says, yeah, great, I hope you die. It's very unlikely, unless the doctor knows me, in which case is very likely. But it's very unlikely because the minute I define my role as a patient, I am forcing the doctor to act as a doctor.

You know?

The minute I commit a crime, which is a role, a criminal, a role. The minute I commit a crime, I am forcing the policeman to be a policeman.

So my role defines his role. His role defines my role. This is known as interdependence, social interdependence. And it depends crucially on role play.

Now, Mead made a distinction between play and game. He said, play is when you engage in a single role. So when you're at home, your mother, that's a play. You're playing the role of a mother.

But game means that you have multiple roles in multiple situations within society. So the game is the total of all the roles you are playing. You're a daughter, but you're also a student, but you're also a woman.

A woman is a role. It's not biologically determined, it's a role assigned by society, your sex is biologically determined, you're female, but being a woman is socially imposed, it's a role.

So you're a woman, your daughter, your student, these are roles.

As a woman, you're engaging in a play. You're playing the role of a woman.

But when you put everything together, student, woman, daughter, this, that, you're engaged in the game, the game of life, the game of society.

So he suggested there are these three stages, language, play and game.

And he said that as we grow up, remember this course is about lifespan development, lifespan development.

I hope it doesn't explode until the break.

So lifespan development.

So we're talking about how people evolve.

And so, Mead said that initially as children, we play roles, and then we learn as children that there are multiple roles, and then we play the game.

But we are still not fully social creatures. We know that we are playing the game. Westill feel that we are acting.

And then he says when we grow up, there is the generalized other. It's a concept in Meets' work, the social theory of self.

The generalized other is the totality of society, the totality of community.

So, if I interact with Marian, for example, I ask him to shoot me, hopefully with a camera, and so on.

So I'm engaging in a play. I'm also forcing him, not forcing him with a gun, but expectations, social expectations, force Marion to assume his role.

His role is a videographer, cameraman. That's his role. My role is teacher.

So I'm playing a game, I'm playing a role, I'm sorry. Because I'm in a room and you're students and his cameraman and so, so forth, I'm also playing a game. I have multiple roles.

So I'm playing a game.

But beyond a certain stage, there is a third player here.

Even if I'm only interacting with Marianne and with you, let's say. There's a third player.

The third player is society. So the undeclared participant, because Marian is here, you can see him, I'm here, you can see me, unfortunately for you, you are here, we're all visible, we're all, but there's a third player here in the air, in the atmosphere, ambient, and you cannot see it, and it's society.

Society is what he calls the generalized other.

You're playing a role with other people, you're playing a game with multiple roles, but you're also playing with society. You're also playing a game with multiple roles but you're also playing with society you're also playing a role with society with the community they are the generalized other and they're always with you even when you're alone in bed alone in bed surfing watching Netflix or doing other things which I will not go into, even then you are, you are, with the generalized other.

The generalized other is there, always. You cannot get it out of your head. It surrounds you. It's your atmosphere.

So this is his idea of the role of the generalized other.

He says that it has, it's two ways. You interact with the generalized other, with society and community. And society and community serves like an observer. You feel that you're constantly observed. Someone is constantly watching you.

You know the famous expression, big brother? Big brother. So there's a big brother. There's an eye in the sky that constantly surveils you and watches you and monitors you and so on.

And in the work of others, for example, in the work of Freud and so on, they suggested that we internalize the generalized other. So the generalized other is the way society sees us. Society, we are observed by society.

And Freud and others said that we internalize it. Society becomes a part of us. And then we are observed from inside.

So society is observing us not only from outside, but also from inside.

How is this called?

Conscience. Conscience is society's gaze from inside you.

So when you're all alone, absolutely alone, there's no one in the room. It's just you and you. Society is observing you. And it is observing you from the inside.

So if you steal my iPad, which is highly recommended, you would feel bad. Your conscious would tell you, you've done something wrong.

This voice is the generalized other. You have internalized it. It became a part of you. You're controlled by society. You are playing roles according to strict rules and if you deviate from the rules, if you violate the rules, society is inside you and reminds you of that and makes you feel bad and in effect punishes it.

There's a famous book by Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. And in crime and punishment, there's a wonderful guy named Raskolnikov, named Raskolnikov kills an old lady for her money, also because she disgust him. Anyhow, he kills an old lady.

And the book is about this. He's exactly about what we are talking, because he has a voice inside him that keeps pushing him to confess.

So he goes to the police station many times and he talks to the inspector in the police stations, but he can't help it. At the end he confesses, at the end he admits that he killed the old woman.

And it's 400, 500 pages of how this is happening internally from the inside.

Okay, books at the time were 400, 500 pages because there was no television, no internet, no nothing. So people had time to read books. Today, it would probably be a meme on Instagram.

Raskolnikov felt bad, Raskolnikov. F. Raskolico.

So, and this is the generalized other in Mead's work.

Okay?

Okay. We are back to Mr. Mead, G.H. Mead.

And Mead suggested, in the footsteps of William James, suggested that the self is divided in two major parts, the I and the me.

The I is the active part. When you drink coffee, when you study, when you laugh, this is the eye is doing all this. The eye is the active part.

The me is the total, the me is the way that you interact in society, the way that you relate to other people.

So the me is like an algorithm. The me tells you how to behave in groups of people, how to behave in relationships.

And so the me is more, provides the context of the I.

The I acts, the I operates. The I makes decisions. The I makes choices.

But the I is under the supervision of the me.

The me tells the I, don't do this. This is socially unacceptable. Or don't do this. you will destroy your relationship. Or in some cases, do this, you will destroy your relationship.

Because it's a horrible relationship. It's a great idea to do this.

So, the me provides the context of the I, controls the I, disciplines the I.

The I has no awareness of society. The I is very reminiscent of Freud's id.

Like Freud's id, the I is primitive. The I wants things. I want coffee. That's the I. Or coffee or other things. So, this is the I.

And then the me says, you know, call it. This is not the way it's done. There's relationships to consider. The society to consider. You're playing a role. Obey the rules, and so on so forth.

What happens when the me and the I agree?

Because the normal state is that the me and the I argue all the time. The me and the I are in conflict.

This was also the view of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud said that the id and the ego are in constant conflict.

The ego is in charge, the ego rules, but still the id is trying to sabotage the ego. The id is sometimes out of control and the ego loses control and so on.

It's a war. It's a battle zone internally between the id and the ego. It's the same in Mead's work.

Mead preceded Freud, actually. And you're beginning to see what I mean when I say that ideas are recycled time and again.

So Mead said that the I and the me are in constant battle. The me is like the parent, and the I is like the child, but very young child, and very strict parent, with conscience and social rules, and so.

But what happens when they both agree? But they agree.

The I says, excuse me, me, I want to do this, and me says, go ahead. That's a great idea. I've been waiting for you to say, what took you so long?

They agree. So in this condition, there is a sense of exaltation, a sense of, wow, wonderful sense, euphoria.

And the clinical term for this is narcissistic elation. Narcissistic elation and oceanic feeling.

Oceanic feeling is a phrase coined by Freud. Narcissistic elation is a phrase coined by Bella Greenberg, excuse me for the word, and this means simply that you feel elated, you feel euphoric, you feel one with the world, one with the world, because the world as represented by the me, society as represented by the me, approves of what you're doing, gives you the okay, says you're right.

So it's a great feeling when society agrees with you, when you belong, that is a sense of belonging, a sense of being accepted.

When you are in a group of people and they accept you and you feel that you belong and everything you do, they like and they also like you as a person, you feel great, no?

So it's a good feeling. This is what happens when the me, which represents all other people, and the I, which represents you, agree.

Because then they actually have consensus, and it's a wonderful feeling.

Now there's a big difference between agreement, when the two agree, and fusion.

Fusion or merger. Fusion or merger is when the I and the me become one, single psychodynamic entity.

When they become one, that is a pathology, actually. When the two fuse, then there is no social control on the activities of the eye. The eye is still active, but the me does not provide calibration and is not corrective. There's no correction, course correction.

So the eye goes totally crazy.

An example would be probably, I'm not sure, but I think, psychopathy, I think that would be an example, where the me is essentially.

Now we have situations where only the me exists, not the I.

So there are pathologies of the me-eye system.

An example where only the me exists, but not the I, is what is known as people pleasing. You heard of this phenomenon? People pleasing?

It's when your actions and decisions and choices are based on what other people want. Not what you want, but what other people want.

Because you want them to like you. You want them to accept you. You're terrified of conflict and criticism. So you do whatever they want.

This is a situation where there's only me, only society, but no I. There's no eye. There's only me.

And that's a pathology.

Another example which may surprise you a lot is narcissism.

In narcissism there's no I. The narcissist has no ego and no self, actually.

In narcissism there's only me, only society.

The narcissist goes around and collects feedback from people.

The narcissist says, I'm great, no? Tell me I'm great. And then he collects these. He harvests these reactions and he builds his self-esteem.

So narcissists need feedback from the outside, input from the outside, in order to regulate their internal environment, their sense of self-esteem, sense of self-worth, self-identity and so on, self-concept, everything is coming from the outside.

So narcissists have only me. They don't have an eye.

The people pleaser has only me and obeys the me.

The narcissist tries to control the me, to coerce the me.

Narcissist is very aggressive. The people pleaser is very submissive.

But in both cases, that's only me.

Narcissist is very aggressive. The people pleaser is very submissive.

But in both cases, there's only me.

We say that there is no agency. There's no agent. There's nobody there.

To cut along, sorry, sure, there.

So these are pathologies of the I-Me system in Mead's work.

Moving from the left to the right, which is a political process that's happening all over the world, and we are now in the right.

And to the right we have who else? Jung.

Jung was a psychiatrist, actually among the ten most important psychologists of the first half of the 20th century, Jung was the only one who had formal training in psychology, only.

It's pretty shocking.

Freud was a neurologist, and Winnicott was a pediatrician and so on.

So Jung was a psychiatrist.

At the beginning, he was the disciple of Freud. Freud was like his father, and he was like his son. And he was a disciple. He was a follower of Freud and so on.

But then they had a fallout. They had a big fight.

And Jung developed his own theories, which became more and more insane by the minute. They developed his own theories in psychology.

Early Jung is very impressive, very analytical and has great ideas. Late Life Jung is a bit on the crazy side.

That happened a lot among many psychologists.

There was another guy. His name was Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm Reich was a top-level psychoanalyst, and at the end of his life he was capturing energy in boxes from people.

So psychologists tend to go crazy. I'm warning you. Think about it. Prepare your pension plans and health care plan. Just take this into account.

Young, by the way, was clinically diagnosed as psychotic. He had clinical psychosis. And he said that his psychosis taught him everything he knew about human psychology. As for you to know.

Coming back to Jung, one of the more relevant and interesting ideas he's come up with is the persona.

Now persona is a Greek word and it means mask. So, personality, the way you're wearing a mask. That's your personality.

Why? Because your personality is perceived by other people from the outside. Other people judge your personality, so this is your mask.

Anyhow, he came up with the idea of persona, and he said that every human being has two components, two parts.

There is the authentic self.

And by the way, the authentic self became the core tenet, the core idea in what came to be known later as existentialism. Existentialist philosophy, existentialist psychology. They revolve around the concept of the authentic self.

So there is the authentic self, and there is the self that you show other people, the persona, your mask.

And he said that your mask and the authentic self have nothing in common.

Today we disagree. We think that many elements in the mask are founded on who you truly are. We believe that.

But at the time, he said no. These two are totally different and separate.

And there was even discussion, not by Jung, but discussion among others, like Ferenczi and others. And they discussed what happens when the mask is dominant, when the mask takes over, and your authentic self is suppressed, or non-existent even.

What happens then?

And so there was a whole discussion about personality problems, problems of personality. Personality in the sense of showing the mask.

So that's why we have personality disorders. Okay? It's disorders of presentation, in effect.

If you read the diagnostic criteria in the diagnostic and statistical manual, you read the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, you will see that the diagnostic criteria have to do with society, with relationships, not with the individual.

So a diagnostic criteria could be envious of other people, or a diagnostic criteria could be exploiting other people.

So it's about other people. Personality is absolutely external. It's a common mistake, even in textbooks, to say that personality is who you are. Personality is who others perceive that you are.

And you manage this, and this is known as impression management.

You're managing the impression of you. The way you dress, the way you sit, the way you sit, the way you behave, the way you walk even. All this is intended to convey information to the environment about who you are.

Look at me. Look at me. That's who I am. Listen to me. That's who I am. And you have to trust that that's who I am because you have no other source of information. Self-reporting is the only information.

So what people do, they observe behavior. They observe your behavior and they compare it to what you're saying. They compare it to the information that you broadcast.

And then if there is a discrepancy, if what you're saying about yourself, the way you behave doesn't sit well with the behavior, then we know something is wrong, you're faking it, you're fake. Or maybe you are self-deceiving. You're not a fake, but you're lying to yourself about who you are.

So there's a problem there. We call this problem pathology. There's a pathology.

So, Jung said there's a persona and the authentic self, which later became, as I said, the core tenet of existentialism.

And much later, in 1959, there was a guy called Erving Goffman.

Now, I promised you today to discuss other disciplines, other professions. Erving Goffman was not a psychologist. He was a sociologist, one of the most famous sociologists in history.

And he wrote a very famous book, which in my view is superior to many psychological texts. The book is titled, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. It was published in 1959.

And what he said in this book is that people have a whole garbology, a whole cupboard full of masks.

It's not true that a person has a single mask, because Jung said that a person has a single mask. Jung said whenever you're in society, whenever you interact with other people, you put on the mask.

Goffman said, no. You have different masks for different people. Different masks for different situations. You have a whole derobah of masks and you're using these masks according to the environment. So the environment triggers the choice of the mask. That's what the Goffman said.

And he said that masks are used in face-to-face interactions.

I think that's a very limited view. I think we use masks most of the time. Even when we are not face-to-face, even when we only imagine an interaction with someone specific, someone we know, we immediately put on the mask.

I think the mask comes up whenever we are in any social situation, real or imagined or anticipated. Whenever we think of society, whenever we think of other people, we stop being ourselves. Whenever we think of other people, we are no longer ourselves. We begin to play, we begin to act a role, we begin to put a mask.

Some people are only the mask. There's nothing but the mask. So they are constantly wearing a mask. These people are known as narcissists, for example. Narcissists, only the mask. There's nothing behind the mask.

Goffman wrote the following, and again you see this is 1959.

Today we have a much broader and much more nuanced view of these processes. We agree today that people put masks. We agree that people, in other words, modify behaviors and manage impressions according to social context. We agree with that.

But we also think that social context is internalized. So we can put on a mask and we can modify behavior even if you only think about the social context. Consider it.

And so this is what Goffman had to say at the time.

Behind many masks and behind many characters, each performer, because he said that people are performers, they're like actors, each performer tends to wear a single look, a naked, unsocialized look.

So he said if you take off the mask, you see a naked person, and this naked person has no social skills.

And this is very reminiscent of Mead, Mead's eye. The eye of Mead is naked, has no defenses, and has no idea about society. Doesn't know how to behave, doesn't know how to interact with people, doesn't know how to talk to people, it's totally, you know, primitive, and isolated, solipsistic.

So Mead's eye is like the person behind the mask in Goffman's work.

He said that when the normal course of events is disrupted, you may get an image of the man behind the mask.

This was 1959, so when people said men, they meant men and women. In good literature, Victorian literature and so forth, we use only male gender pronouns.

So in my videos, for example, I keep saying he. And then many people write to me, why do you say he? It's also she. Women are also abusers. Women are also narcissists and so on.

But that's good literature. In good literature, we use male gender pronouns. So that's good literature. In good literature, we use male gender pronouns.

So that's what he said he said when there is stress when there is anxiety when there is tension when there is disruption when there is uncertainty the mask falls because it takes a lot of energy to maintain the mask and when you're in survival mode, you need the energy for survival.

So the mask disappears. There's no energy for the mask.

And then you see the real person. Then you see really we are dealing with.

You know, the mask slips, and you see the real person. You see the real person in trouble, in crisis. Then you see the real person.

Every grandmother would have told you that. And some grandfathers even.

So that's nothing new.

But it was revolutionary at that time in the sense that he suggested that wearing a mask is the normal state.

Because Jung suggested that wearing a mask is the abnormal state, the non-authentic state.

Goffman said, no. Wearing a mask is what we do 99% of the time. It's just when we are totally alone or we are totally in crisis that we are not wearing a mask, but all the rest of the time we're wearing a mask.

In this sense, he agreed with Mead, though probably he never heard of Mead, I think. He doesn't mention him in his work.

But he agreed with Mead because Mead said the same.

Mead said the I acts under the control of the me. The me is society.

So the I acts under the control of society. In other words, the I is not real, not authentic. The I is not faithful to itself. It adheres, it obeys society.

So the behavior of the I and the presentation of the I change according to society.

Society changes you. Society dictates who you are and how you behave.

So they all agree in effect. They all agree.

They agree that we have a core. They agree that this core is authentic.

They call it I, it's mine, never mind.

They agree that there is something there, but this something doesn't express itself, doesn't manifest, because society does not allow you to become you.

This is a very important sentence. Society does not allow you to become you.

The main function of society is to make sure that you are never, ever yourself.

That is why people rebel against society. That's why you have protest movements. That's why you have crime. That's why all these phenomena are rebellion against society's attempt to destroy who you are.

Society regards the authentic self, society regards the I, society regards the id as dangerous. They're dangerous.

Because these core features, who you truly are, is very selfish, very primitive, and can harm other people, and definitely is not helpful to the functioning of society.

Society requires you to be dependent, interdependent. Society requires you to suppress your wishes. Society requires you to delay gratification.

Society is the exact opposite of being authentic, being you.

That is not Sam Vaknin. That is Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous philosopher.

So Sartre said, freedom is rebellion.

He said, when you find yourself in a social situation, if you go along with a social situation, you think you're free.

Here you are students. All of you want to go home.

Right? Right. But none of you gets up and walks out of the room.

Why? Society.

I won't do anything to you. You have my permission. Go. I will not report it to anyone.

Why aren't you going?

Society, expectations, roles, rules. You suppress who you truly are and what you really want.

So Sartre said, if you're in a social situation and you're playing by the rules, that doesn't make you free.

It means you're asleep. You're asleep.

Freedom is aboutplaying by the rules, that doesn't make you free. It means you're asleep. You're asleep.

Freedom is about rebellion. Freedom is about countering the situation. Freedom is about resisting.

He said freedom is resistance. Freedom is confronting or avoiding the dictates of society.

But he said, when you finally have freedom, when you finally do become free, when you're not obeying the roles and rules of society, you're free, but then you have a lot of anxiety. You develop angst. Angst means a lot of anxiety.

So what society does, it reduces anxiety. It's like society tells you, listen, if you are not you, I will take care of it. Just don't be you. Don't be you and everything will be okay. Don't be you and I will take care of your needs. I will take care of your wishes. I'll make you happy. Just don't be you. That's the only price I'm asking you to pay.

So this is society's message.

And Sartre says, if you become truly free, if you become free from the shackles of society, if you're no longer obeying society, not the rules or not the rules, you don't play the rules by the rules and you don't enact the roles, then you develop anxiety because this protection is gone.

There is comfort in numbers. You know, when you are among a big group of people, you feel stronger. You feel protected.

But then if you are truly alone, because to be authentic, to be you, is to be alone. But I mean completely alone. In the existential sense, not physically. Alone, internally, you're alone.

Then it's terrifying. He says that freedom is terrifying. That's why most people are never free. Because it's terrifying. And he called it angst. And he called it angst.

He gave a famous example in his book about a waiter. He said you go to a restaurant and you see a man comes in, takes off his coat and puts on a waiter's uniform, a uniform of a waiter, a uniform of a waiter, he said, that moment this person is no longer authentic, he's playing a social role. So he is, that moment he's a slave. From that moment he's a slave.

But if this person were to throw away all these, the uniform and the rules and the roads and the, throw everything away, yes, he would be free, yes, he would be authentic, he would be authentic, but he would also be very, very anxious. That's the price you pay for being you.

So this is Jean Paul Sartre, and Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that the me and the I are in constant conflict.

Again, it's the same suggestion of Freud, same suggestion of Adler, same suggestions of William James, everyone suggests the same, that we are not creatures of harmony.

It's not true that we are in a state of inner peace and harmony, and then if there is an accident or a crisis, only then we are disturbed, only then we are uncomfortable.

That's not true. We're in a constant state of conflict, constant state of dissonance, constant state of discomfort, constant state of anxiety, life sucks, very stressful, we are constantly in tension, and only very rarely do we reach a state of inner peace, nirvana, harmony. It's very, very rare.

And we try to reach this condition of inner peace and harmony and contentment or happiness or whatever you want to call it. We try to reach this condition, usually via other people.

So again the me takes over and say if I only find someone to fall in love with that would be wonderful. The condition of being in love is wonderful.

Then I have inner peace, I have harmony, I'm happy, so I need to fall in love.

In other words, you want to acquire harmony through someone else. You want to fall in love with someone else. It is this someone else who would make you happy.

So this is the me. That's not the I. That someone else is part of society. Again you want society to make you happy. Again you want society to create harmony.

The test of whether you're authentic or not is if I put you on an isolated island with not a single human being. Then we will see if you are truly authentic and truly capable of happiness and inner peace and harmony.

It's not a big deal to feel happy because you have a lover or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever. That's not a big deal. It's not a big deal to be happy because you have money.

Money is not about you. Money is about society. If society disappears tomorrow, your money is meaningless. Money is meaningful only in society. Everything that makes you happy is not you at all. It's coming from the outside.

So it's the me. It's not the I. This is the control of society, that it deceives you into believing that it has the power to give you happiness. Society is misleading you, it's deceiving you, is telling you, count on me, I will show you the way to happiness, the way to happiness is to make money, the way to happen is to have a boyfriend. The way to happiness is to have children.

Never mind that all studies show that parents are very unhappy people. I'm sorry to inform you, but all psychological studies, not a single exception, show that people with children are much less happy than people without children. That's the fact.

And yet society convinced you that it's not true, that children cause happiness. A society convinced you that money causes happiness, despite the fact that suicide rates are much higher among people as their income grows. Suicide rates are much lower among poor people.

Society lies to you about this, convinces you. Society tells you that being in love is a wonderful state. And so this is the key to harmony and happiness and so forth.

Then you fall in love. You're in a state of limerance. And you go through the worst period in your life.

So society has these narratives which are counterfactual. They're not inaccurate, they're misleading, about happiness.

Freud, of course, in his theory, and I told you in one of the previous lessons that the biggest plagiarist in human history was probably Zygman Freud. I'm not quite sure, but I think he was the biggest plagiarist. He stole ideas from absolutely everyone, and he renamed them and became very famous. He was good in public relations. He was a genius. I'm not saying he wasn't, but he really stole ideas from almost everyone.

The idea of dissociation, the idea of the unconscious. None of this is Freud. The idea of therapy is not Freud. None of it is Freud.

So one of the ideas that Freud, let's put it gently, borrowed, one of the ideas that he borrowed, is this internal conflict.

But Freud suggested that we have, he accepted the I-Me, the I-Me scheme, although he was not aware, as far as I know, he was not aware of Mead's work. He wasn't aware of Me's work.

But he accepted this scheme of I and Me, and he suggested that we have id, id is the I, ego is the me. Ego is in control of the reality, access to reality.

And the ego has an element known as the ego censor. The ego censor.

So, sorry, I mislead you here. The ego censor. The ego censor is the me.

What is the ego censor in Freud's work? The ego censorThe ego sensor is an agency, an internal agency, an executive function, or whatever you want to call it. And it is located in the pre-conscious.

Have you studied psychoanalysis at all? Have you been exposed to it?

There are three layers. There is the unconscious. There is the pre-conscious and there is conscious. These are the three layers.

And so the sensor is in the pre-conscious, between unconscious and conscious, like a firewall, like a buffer.

And the role of the sensor is to decide which material, which content reaches consciousness.

So there's a lot of material going on. Majority of the content is unconscious. And all of it, because it's full of energy, all of it is trying to go to the consciousness, to become conscious.

And there is a sensor, and the sensor decides. It says, okay, this can go to consciousness. Go ahead, go ahead. And this cannot.

The sensor, the ego sensor, has rules.

And one of the rules of the ego sensor is this content socially acceptable.

So if the ego sensor decides that the content is not socially acceptable, the ego sensor does not allow the content to become conscious.

For example, I hate my neighbor, I want to murder her with a knife at night and her dog also.

That's content. Okay? You're shocked. You don't know my neighbor. That's content.

But this content happens to be, at least in some countries, socially unacceptable.

So the censor would push it to the unconscious, would not allow this content to become conscious.

So the sensor, the ego sensor, is actually the me. It's the me in Mead's work.

Because the me in Mead's work controls the I, doesn't allow the I to manifest or to express itself, disciplines the I, converts the I into pro-social variance.

So the me is in control, and the censor in Freud's work is in control. It doesn't allow this kind of content to go out.

But the censor has other rules.

So rule number one, is it acceptable to society? It's not acceptable to society. It can never become conscious. It remains in the unconscious.

But it has other rules.

For example, if I have two conflicting wishes, you remember the neighbor that I want to kill together with a dog at night, with a knife? Yeah, remember her? I also want to marry her because I'm very attracted to her. Okay?

These are two conflicting wishes unless I marry her post-mortem. So it's two conflicting wishes.

So the minute there are two conflicting wishes, the sensor intervenes and does not allow this content to become conscious because it will create dissonance. At the same time, I want two things, which conflict. It will create dissonance, anxiety, and so the censor suppresses this.

The sensor also has another rule in Freud's work, and that is if the content provokes in you very negative emotions, very unsettling emotions, uncomfortable, makes you uncomfortable, makes you anxious, and so the censor will repress that.

So a lot of content is repressed by this guardian, by this gatekeeper, which is the ego sensor, which is the equivalent of the me in Mead's work.

One last thing before I let you go.

Initially in his early work, Mead suggested that there's only one I and one me.

And that is very reminiscent of Jung. Jung said there's one persona and one authentic. Mead said, long before Jung, Mead said, there's only I and there's me, one eye, one me.

Later on, Mead refined his social theory of the self and said, no, there are multiple I eyes and multiple mes depending on the environment.

Does it remind you of something? Goffman.

It reminds you of Goffman. Because that's what Goffman said. We have many masks, not only one mask, but we have many masks.

That is what Mead said, decades before Goffman. He said we have many types of me and many types of I, and he said, if you're consistently confronted with an environment that brings up a specific me all the time, your personality will break.

And he didn't call it by the name, but he was the first to describe dissociation. He was actually the first to describe dissociation.

He said, if you're confronted by pressures from the environment all the time, conflicting pressures, traumatic pressures, and so on, your personality will break to multiple me's and multiple eyes.

So this is a great description of dissociation. And he was the first actually to suggest the concept of dissociation without calling it dissociation.

Good news is that in the next two weeks I'm traveling. I'm giving it a one-day seminar in Zagreb to clinicians, to therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists.

So it's not going to be easy, but it's going to be easy on you, because I'm away for two weeks.

But these are the good news.

I also have bad news. And the bad news are that I've made, together with Marian, I've short two videos, two lectures, they're available online for the fifth and for the 12.

Those of you who are truly masochistic and didn't get help by the time, you can watch these videos. They are the lectures, actually. They are the lectures.

When we meet next, we are going to discuss, in my view, the most fascinating current thinking in psychology, and that is the idea that we don't have a self at all, but we are all suffering from multiple personality disorder in effect. We all have multiple personality disorder.

And this is known as a theory of self-states, or the theory of ego states, or the theory of sub-personalities. I'm one of the contributors to this theory.

I have a theory of my own. It's called the Intracecic Activation Model, IPAM. And this is what I'm going to lecture in Zagreb.

But I will introduce you first to the work of my predecessors, which is Philip Bromberg and many others, and I will take you gradually, finally, in the end, we'll dedicate some minutes to my work.

There's a whole playlist about my work, about the IPAM model on YouTube channel, but I'm not quite sure you could understand it at this stage. It's a bit complicated.

I will also introduce you to systems theory and family systems theory. Family system theory is not about the family, of course. It's about regarding your internal life, internal psychological life as a family. And saying each part of your mind is like a family. One part is mother, one part is father, one part is sibling. And regarding the mind as a family.

So that's internal family system.

And see you next time.