Behavior
The Technique of Survival
Desperation and Illusion
Despair and Dissociation
Parental Unreality
The Reigning Illusions
Respiration
Energy Metabolism
Motility
Compulsion and Illusion
Eating and Sexuality
Paranoid Behavior and Overeating
Sleeping
Constitutional Factors
Psychological Factors
The Trauma of Identification
Sex and Paranoia
The Therapy of a Schizoid Person
13. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF IDENTITY
Unmasking the Role
Self-assertion
Transference, Resistance, and Countertransference
Bewitchment
Community versus Causality
The Conceptual Emotions
Knowledge and Understanding
1
The Problem of Identity
Normally, people don't ask themselves, Who am I? One's identity is taken for granted. Each person carries in his wallet papers that serve to identify him. Consciously, he knows who he is. However, below the surface a problem of identity exists. On the border of consciousness he is disturbed by dissatisfactions, uneasy about decisions, and tormented by the feeling of “missing out” on life. He is in conflict with himself, unsure of his feelings, and his insecurity reflects his problem of identity. When dissatisfaction becomes despair and insecurity verges on panic an individual may ask himself, Who am I? This question indicates that the facade through which a person seeks identity is crumbling. The use of a facade or the adoption of a role as a means to achieve identity denotes a split between the ego and the body. I define this split as the schizoid disturbance which underlies every problem of identity.
For example, a famous artist walked into my office and said, “I am confused and desperate. I don't know who I am. I walk down the street and ask myself, Who are you?”
It would have been meaningless to reply, “You are the well-known painter whose work hangs in many museums.” He knew that. What he complained of was a loss of the feeling of self, the loss of contact with some vital aspect of existence that gives meaning to life. This missing element was an identification with the body, the foundation upon which a personal life is erected. My artist patient became actively aware of this missing element in a dramatic experience. He told me:
The other day I looked in the mirror, and I became frightened when I realized it was me. I thought, This is what people see when they look at me.
The image was a stranger. My face and my body didn't seem to belong to me…I felt very unreal.
This experience, in which there is a loss of feeling of the body, with accompanying sensations of strangeness and unreality, is known as a depersonalization. It denotes a break with reality and occurs in the first stages of a psychotic episode. If it continues, the person loses not only the feeling of identity but also his conscious awareness of identity. Fortunately, this episode was short-lived in my patient. He was able to reestablish some contact with his body, so that the feeling of unreality disappeared. However, his identification with his body remained tenuous, and the problem of his identity persisted.
The feeling of identity stems from a feeling of contact with the body. To know who one is, an individual must be aware of what he feels. He should know the expression on his face, how he holds himself, and the way he moves. Without this awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body. I will return again to the case of the artist.
As he sat opposite me, I saw his drawn face, his empty eyes, his tightly set jaw, and his frozen body. In his immobility and shallow breathing, I could sense his fear and panic. He, however, was not aware of the gauntness of his face, the blankness of his eyes, the tension in his jaw, or the tightness of his body. He did not feel his fear and panic. Being out of touch with his body, he only sensed his confusion and desperation.
The complete loss of body contact characterizes the schizophrenic state. Broadly speaking, the schizophrenic doesn't know who he is, and is so much out of touch with reality that he cannot even phrase the question.
On the other hand, the schizoid individual knows he has a body and is, therefore, oriented in time and space. But since his ego is not identified with his body and does not perceive it in an alive way, he feels unrelated to the world and to people. Similarly, his conscious sense of identity is unrelated to the way he feels about himself. This conflict does not exist in a healthy person whose ego is identified with his body and in whom the knowledge of his identity stems from the feeling of the body.
A confusion of identity typifies most persons in our culture. Many people struggle with a diffused sense of unreality about themselves and their lives. They become desperate
