Images of self in psychological thought

Mascolo1•Surabhika Maheshwari2 Received: 15 June 2018 / Accepted: 24 August 2019 / Published online: 19 September 2019 National Academy of Psychology NAOP India 2019 Abstract The concep

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Psychological Studies

ISSN 0033-2968

Volume 64

Number 3

Psychol Stud (2019) 64:249-257

DOI 10.1007/s12646-019-00517-y

Michael F. Mascolo & Surabhika

Maheshwari

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R E V I E W A R T I C L E

Images of Self in Psychological Thought

Michael F Mascolo1•Surabhika Maheshwari2

Received: 15 June 2018 / Accepted: 24 August 2019 / Published online: 19 September 2019

 National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2019

Abstract The concept of self is a multi-faceted one that is

used by different theorists in different ways In this paper,

we present an overview of the dominant themes and images

that structure conceptions of self as used by psychologists,

sociologists, philosophers and other scholars In order for

concepts like self and identity to be meaningful, it is

nec-essary that we compare and clarify their various uses,

identify the different aspects of experience that they are

intended to illuminate, and seek to consolidate them in

ways that are coherent and integrative In this paper, we

identify four broad models of self in psychology: self as

inner life, social conceptions of identity, relational

con-ceptions of self and concon-ceptions of self based on group

identifications We offer this typology as an initial

frame-work for coordinating different conceptions of self and

identity

Keywords Self
Identity
Theoretical integration

Agency

The concept of self is an imprecise one Laypersons and

scholars use the term in very different ways to refer to

different processes and states (Katzko,2003) As a result, it

is often difficult to know what people mean when they

invoke this concept in theoretical and empirical analyses

Part of the problem, of course, is that the concept of self is

an everyday one It comes from everyday experiences and

interactions It is thus defined against the backdrop of shared everyday meanings These meanings, of course, are polysemous and variegated

Perhaps the most basic meaning of the term self is captured by our everyday use of the first person pronoun This meaning is aptly expressed by Shoemaker (1968), who writes:

In all first-person statements, including ‘‘psycholog-ical’’ or ‘‘experience’’ statements, the word ‘I’ serves the function of identifying for the audience the sub-ject to which the predicate of the statement must apply if the statement is to be true (what it indicates,

of course, is that the subject is the speaker, the maker

of the statement) And this is precisely the function of

a referring expression (p 555)

In this sense, Shoemaker’s definition might be seen to eliminate much of the mystery that surrounds the word ‘‘I.’’

‘‘I’’ refers to this person—the person doing the speaking—

rather than some other person who is listening, silent or not present In this way, the term ‘‘I’’ operates much like the subject of an active sentence; it refers to the entity or process doing the doing

But this is where our problems begin The moment we speak of doing, we raise the question of agency When this happens, we must confront the sense, engrained in our experience, that ‘‘we’’ are the author of our actions—that

‘‘we’’ are somehow in control of our own destinies (Shepherd 2015) This experience of agency sets us off from inanimate entities and processes: Things are moved; persons act How are we to account for our sense of being self-caused agents (Stillman, Baumeister & Mele, 2011)? One way to account for everyday experience is to affirm that we do indeed exist as a kind of self-causing entity—a mind or self—a willful and self-determining process

& Michael F Mascolo

mascolom@merrimack.edu

1 Merrimack College, North Andover, USA

2 Department of Psychology, Indraprastha College for Women,

University of Delhi, Delhi, India

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-019-00517-y

defined in contradiction to the determined corporeal of the

body As shown in (a) in Fig.1, this position expresses the

duality between incorporeal mind and the material body

espoused by Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes and others

This way of thinking, of course, brings us immediately up

against the intractable problem of the relation between

mind and body If mind is in corporeal and operates

according to its own principles, how is it possible for it to

control a body that is material and can only be moved by

other material forces and entities? Given these same

con-ditions, how would it be possible for a material body to

influence the operation or experience of a non-corporeal

substance, when, by definition, the material body can only

play a causal role in affecting other material bodies

Another way to solve this problem is to reject Cartesian

dualism in favor of monism There is no duality between

mind and body; there is only body This theoretical move

allows us to escape the logical contradiction of dualism—

but at a cost If we are mere bodies, what happens to our

sense of agency? Are we mechanisms that are merely

moved? Is our capacity for agency an illusion? So much of our struggle with the concept of self has to do with navi-gating the vastness between these alternative conceptions Psychological science, of course, is founded upon the belief in some form of determinism To admit an unmoved mover into psychological theorizing would question the very foundation of scientific thinking

However, even as they embrace monism, psychological scientists often find it difficult to leave behind dualistic tendencies (Hacker,2015) Something akin to the Cartesian

cogito tends to enter into the back door of even the most deterministic of theorizing (Bennett & Hacker, 2003)

Cognitive psychologists differentiate automatic processes from controlled processes (Hassin, Uleman & Bargh,

2005) Automatic processes operate automatically, without consciousness awareness, whereas controlled processes are engaged with there is a need for deliberate conscious control over thinking, feeling or behavior Of course, the duality between automatic and controlled processes is intuitive; it maps onto everyday experience Nonetheless,

Fig 1 Images of self in psychological theory

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explanations of how conscious control processes actually

controltypically remain unclear

A similar tendency occurs in neuroscience—arguably

the most deterministic of psychological sciences

Neuro-science is based upon the proposition that human action

and experience are products and properties of

neurobio-logical activity From this view, what we call ‘‘mind’’ is

‘‘what the brain does’’1 (Haueis, 2014; Slife & Hopkins,

2005) However, theorizing in neuroscience is replete with

agentic language Neuroscientists invoke agentic

meta-phors whenever they suggest—casually or otherwise—that

the brain thinks, perceives, acts, experiences or ‘‘is aware

of’’ something Bennett and Hacker (2003) have labeled

this practice the mereological fallacy—the error of

attributing properties of the whole it its parts While the

brain must mediate the processes of thinking, perceiving,

experiencing, acting and so forth, it is the organism that

thinks, perceives, experiences and acts The brain is a part

of the organism; brain areas are parts of the brain To say

that the brain perceives is akin to saying that a submarine

swims

This is not to suggest that neuroscientists are somehow

unsophisticated Most neuroscientists are aware that to they

are invoking metaphor when they say that the brain thinks.

The problem is that we simply have not yet developed a

vocabulary for taking about neurological activity—or at

least to talk about the relation between neurological and

psychologicalactivity (Haueis, 2014) Even if

psycholog-ical processes are neurobiologpsycholog-ical processes, one cannot

import language developed to understand one level of

functioning in the service of understanding a different level

of functioning (Hacker, 2015) Without the capacity to

experiencewhat we call anguish, one cannot begin to infer

its meaning from even an exhaustive understanding of the

functioning of the brain If neuroscience will eventually

explain psychological science, it will only be because it can

build upon a coherent and sophisticated psychological

science (Mascolo, 2017) Thus, when it comes to the

question of selfhood, there is no simple exit We must

venture forward to build psychological models of self,

personhood, agency and so forth

Conceptions of Self in Psychological Theory

Theorists differ in their conceptions of what it means to

speak of self In their cultural and historical overview of

conceptions of self, Altman and Stile (this volume)

acknowledge the perennial tensions operation between cohesion and fragmentation in the experience of self Alt-man and Stile observe that what we call the experience of self has long been understood to have multiple forms, streams and dimensions A diverse sampling of different conceptions of self is provided in Fig.1.2The four quad-rants of Fig.1reflect different conceptions of self that arise

as scholars point to and privilege different aspects of selfhood

Self as Inner Experience The first quadrant in Fig.1 identifies conceptions of self

organized around the concept of inner experience Model (1)

consists of dualistic Cartesian model of self The (2) Freu-dian conception explains the agency of persons by invoking three different categories of quasi-agencies (Freud,

1949a, b) While id processes refer to internal biological happenings (literally the ‘‘it’’), ego refers to the capacity for persons to exert control over action Superegoprocesses

arise as the result of the internalization of socio-moral

norms Note how, for Freud, the distinction between id and

egoinvoke the duality between mind and body, while the

distinction between ego and superego incorporates the

contrast between individual and society While it is likely that Freud’s translators must bear the burden of the intel-lectual damage that results from populating the mind with multiple internal agencies (Laplanche,1991), many appli-cations of psychoanalysis continue to invoke personified entities as explanations of human action

Model (3) shows the Eriksonian (1950, 1956) solution to proliferation of internal dualities Instead of postulating a series of inner agents, Erikson upheld the primacy of but

one—the ego However, in Erikson, the ego is not an individual structure; it is a relational and developmental

one Ego identity develops over time by virtue of the shifting relations between person and society In this way, Erikson’s model moved psychoanalysis away from trou-bling dualisms and toward relational conceptions of human agency Nonetheless, the concept of ego-as-controller remains a somewhat mysterious one; we are left with the fact of agency, but without a model of how agency actually works

Models (4), (5) and (6) reflect somewhat spiritual con-ceptions of self The real and the mythical are not dis-junctive, but feed each other in a mutative flux (Basu, this volume) Some versions of these conceptions are invoked

by Altman and Stile and Pitra in their contributions to this volume The Indian spiritual conception of self is depicted

in Panel (4) The Indian conception reflects the spiritual,

1 Of course, to say that the mind is what the brain does is to think of

the brain as the kind of thing that can do From this view, from a

neuroscientific perspective, it might be more appropriate (or fair) to

say that what we call the ‘‘mind’’ is ‘‘how the brain functions.’’

2 The structure of this section was inspired by Altman and Stile’s historical overview of conceptions of self.

religious and philosophical traditional of Hindu and

Bud-dhist (Benovsky, 2017; MacKenzie, 2015; McGarrity,

2015) conceptions of psychological and social life At base,

self refers to a kind if deep inner agency, a source spiritual

volition that extends beyond the individual person and

becomes distributed between the spiritual interiority of the

person (Atman) and the universal essence of God

(Brah-man) Here, the spiritual dimension of selfhood is alive and

contrasts deeply with the empirical selves that are derived

by Western academics in their studies Like the Hindu

conception of self, the Buddhist conception (5) embraces a

sense of spiritual interiority that transcends the experience

of the individual person to encompass the broader cosmos

Like the Hindu quest for moksha, the journey to nirvana

arrives through the cultivation of sense of no-self—a sense

of merging with the cosmos which brings deep bliss En

route to the cultivation of non-self, the person is able to

separate from earthly and experiential attachments One’s

own experience becomes a fleeting, impermanent and

detached object of observation The rich Indian tradition of

inner exploration is reflected in Thapan (this volume), who

invokes the work of J Krishnamurti in her analysis of how

we engage with our selves through observation, listening

and looking inwards However, for Thapan, our experience

of self is not something that is encased within; it extends

into and is structured by our relationships with others The

Buddhist conception of self figures in Marginean, Lambert,

LaTorre and Mascolo’s (this volume) analysis of the

intercultural construction of novel forms of selfhood in a

Bhutanese family

In their discussion of the interplay between

fragmenta-tion and cohesion, Altman and Stile (this volume) note how

Hindu and Buddhist conceptions identify self a process that

is, one the one hand, impermanent and continuously

changing, and, on the other hand, a stable observer of the

flux of experience They invoke Bromberg’s (1998)

con-ception that amidst the multiplicity of self experience, the

‘‘observing’’ self is an experience that ‘‘stands in the spaces

between multiple versions of the self.’’ This conception of

self, depicted in Model (6), provides a way of thinking

about how the experience of self is simultaneously subject

and object, fleeting and stable, cohesive and multiplicative

This conception bears similarity to James’s (1890)

con-ceptions of the stream of consciousness, and his distinction

between the sense of ‘‘I’’ that navigates among multiple

senses of ‘‘me.’’ It stands as a transitional model as we

move to conceptions of self that privilege multiplicity,

fragmentation and decentralization

Fragmentation and Multiplicity of Self

The second quadrant of Fig.1 depicts models of self that

privilege the idea of fragmentation, decentralization and

contextualization over cohesion and centralization Model (7) contains an extreme representation of the decentralized postmodern conception of self (Gergen, 2009; Mahoney,

1993; McKenna & Hanks, 1996; Wiley, 2012) From this view, to the extent that it makes sense to speak of a self at all, individuals experience themselves in different ways in different contexts (C1, C2, etc.), interactions and social relationships There is no singular, central or omnibus agency or structure that integrates the varieties of self experience Instead, experiences of self are socially con-structed in discursive encounters that occur between indi-viduals Within such models, because experiences of self are continuously emergent in sign-mediated relations between people, it makes no sense to speak of a true, unchanging or even core sense of self Multiplicity, dif-ferentiation and fragmentation take precedence over unity, coordination and integration Model (8) represents the self

as a form of structured multiplicity Such a conception

provides a model that allows for both diversity and inte-gration of experience (Kiang & Harter, 2008; MacKenzie

& Poltera, 2010; Qin & Lykes,2006; Whelton & Green-berg, 2001)

Emphasizing both differentiation and integration of experience, one might suggest that such a model provides the backdrop for most contemporary conceptions of self in Western social psychology (Katzko, 2003; Rosenberg,

1997) The sense of integration as a normative condition provides the backdrop for any analysis of fragmentation However, while we may seek integration in the experience

of self, there are often forces that tear us asunder In such circumstances, integration of self is a hard-won achieve-ment Tara-Chand (this volume) shows how the South Asian Muslim women resist the fragmentation of identity that occurs as they seek to position themselves within British society at a time when Muslims are viewed with suspicion Allowing the participants in her ethnography to speak with their own voices, Tara-Chand asks, ‘‘In the context of the ‘war on terror’…could the South Asian Muslim woman also be British?’’

Model (9) depicts the discursive-relational conception of self This view is most clearly represented in Harre´’s positioning theory (Harre´,2012,2015) Harre´ suggests that

a self is a kind of position that a person adopts in relation to

others within a broader socio-moral or discursive space

The concept of position provides an alternative to the concept of social role The concept of role suggests a kind

of fixedness—a set of more or less static rules that organize how one person relates to another in social contexts In

contrast, a position is a kind of stance, a particular mode of relating in a particular type of context As such, positioning

is a more dynamic concept For Harre´, persons use

lan-guageand other forms of symbolic action to discursively

position themselves in relation to ongoing story lines In

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this way, although persons are agentic beings, they use

socio-cultural tools to define themselves in relation to

ongoing interactions that occur over time Individuals

position themselves not only in relation to others, but also

in relation to jointly created story lines—normative and

socio-moral conceptions of the accepted flow of particular

classes of events over time While persons are discursive

creatures whose actions emerge in social relations, they are

not mere products of fixed social structures The act of

positioning suggests a kind of adaptive flexibility in the

ways in which persons relate to their social environments

In the act of positioning, people use the cultural resources

of their social communities to both define themselves and

to resist the flow of conformity that implicit in the

story-lines that structure everyday life

The concept of storyline is an important one It reminds

us of the centrality of narrative knowing in our conceptions

of self Amidst the flux of human experience, as we engage

with other people over time, who we are at this moment of

time is not intelligible without a sense of who we were and

who we are becoming over time In this way, the capacity

organize experience in terms of a narrative structure

becomes a primary mode of representing selfhood Menon

(this volume) explores the importance and complexities of

the role of narrative in selfhood and how it both builds

upon and organizes our sense of agency and identity over

time Maheshwari draws upon narrative as both a method

and mode of knowing in her analysis of the complexities of

fame in organizing experiences of self

Model (10) shows Hubert Hermans’ (2011; Hermans &

Salgado,2010; Raggatt,2006) dialogical conception of the

intrapsychic experience of self Hermans begins by

rejecting the classic Cartesian conception of self and other

in favor of a dialogical view The dialogical view is similar

to Harre´’s (2015) discursive and Gergen’s (2009) social

constructionist approaches A person is not an individual

entity defined in opposition to social context or the bodily

world; persons are embodied relational beings whose

actions and experiences arise in dialogical exchanges with

others As a result, people experience themselves different

in different contexts and in different relationships with

other people Hermans (2011) takes this idea one step

further While people create selves in dialogical exchanges

with others, the internalization of those exchanges creates

the capacity for the intrapsychic construction and

experi-ence of multiple dialogical selves Just as people have

discursive interactions with others on the social plane of

acting, they create internalized dialogues with imagined

others on the personal plane of thinking, imagining and

experiencing

For Hermans (2011), the dialogical self is composed of

multiple ‘‘I-positions’’—imagined representations of self

who engage in imagined dialogues with multiple imagined

others The dialogical self that one experiences or imagines

in dialogue with one’s boss is different from that which he experiences with his significant other, child, co-worker or even with any of these people in different ways of relating Not only do people experience themselves in terms of dialogical encounters with diverse others, persons can engage in dialogical relations among different I-positions themselves This occurs, for example, when, adopting the

I-position of caring mother engages an alternative self who assumes the I-position of assertive professional Dialogical

conceptions of self are represented in a wide variety of discursive accounts of human action, including internal family systems theory (MacDonald,2005) The importance

of dialogue—and its role in the mutual transformation of each party in an interaction—extends beyond encounters between individual interlocutors Indeed, it extends to relations among groups and even cultures How are cul-tures transformed in their dialogical encounters—not always or even primarily peaceful—with each other? How does a culture reclaim what is its own after having been dominated by another? How has a cultures sense of what is its own changed by the encounter? Basu (this volume) explores questions of multiplicity of selfhood as they arise

at the broader level of cultural and intercultural identity What novel concepts of personhood can arise from the constructive and destructive tensions among nations and cultures?

Relations Between Self and Other

The third quadrant of Fig.1 identifies different ways in which theorists have represented the nature of the rela-tionship between self and other in psychological theory (see Mascolo, Misra & Rapisardi, 2004) These represen-tations are often used to understand cultural differences in how members of different cultural groups experience relations between self and other While the forms of self that are depicted in Quadrant III are likely to be

repre-sented in all cultures in idiosyncratic ways, some forms

become more dominant in some cultural groups rather than others (Mascolo, 2004) The models described in this quadrant overlap with conceptions represented in other quadrants in Fig.1

Model (11) represents what is often called the individual

self From this view, persons are conceptualized as boun-ded, self-contained units each separate from the other Arguably, this view is the dominant conception of social life, at least in much of Western psychology Such a model

is often used to depict the experience of self in individualist societies For example, in the USA, individuals are often idealized as distinct and independent units, each with their own personal goals and desires Individuals are understood

as free to pursue their own personal agendas—so long as

their actions to not violate the freedoms and boundaries of

others in society There are, however, multiple forms of

individualism Some forms of individualism are organized

around the primacy of individual freedom and self-reliance

(Capps & Fenn, 1992); others are organized around the

responsibilities of the individual in relation to others in

society (Montague, 1963) Still others are based upon

communitarian values in which individuals group together

to advance public as well as private goods (Bellah et al.,

1985)

Model (12) identifies what Markus and Kitayama (1991)

have called the interdependent self (Cross, Hardin &

Swing, 2009) Markus and Kitayama (1991) offer the

interdependent conception as a contrast to the independent

conception of self For Marcus and Kitayama, the

inter-dependent self is one that is characteristic of more

col-lectivist societies where the concerns of the group

dominate over the prerogatives of the individual Defined

in contradistinction to the concept of independence,

self-reliance or self-determination, the concept of

interdepen-dence suggests that members of society are mutually

reli-ant—that their sense of autonomy or identity is dependent

upon those of others in society However, while the

con-cept of interdependence provides a useful contrast to

independence, it is not clear that interdependence clarifies

the distinction between the so-called individualist and

collectivist cultures (Mamat et al., 2014; Misra & Giri

1995) Interdependence does not capture, for example, the

social asymmetries, hierarchies and forms of duty and

obligation that are characteristic of many cultures that have

been seen as collectivistic (Roland,1988) Similarly, even

in the so-called individualist cultures, people who are seen

as independent are nonetheless mutually dependent

Nonetheless, like the other models in this quadrant, the

interdependent conception accentuates an important form

of human relating that is often eclipsed by the dominance

of the individualist framework Nayak (this volume)

pro-vides a compelling examination of interdependence in the

construction of self in her analysis of racial grief among a

marginalized social group—Black, lesbian women In her

paper, Nayak advances the thesis that it is through the

mutuality of their relationships that members of

marginalized groups can seek to acknowledge, know and

transform the grief that comes from persistent racism and

marginalization

The relational conception of self is depicted in Model

13 The relational conception stands in contrast to the

individualist view While the individualist model depicts

persons as self-contained units defined by clear boundaries,

the relational view maintains that persons are open-ended

beings with permeable boundaries From this model, one is

defined not as an entity unto oneself, but instead in terms of

one’s relation to others The relational model is not simply

asserting that selves emerge in social interactions between independent units; instead, in the relational approach, self and other make each other up; persons come into being through their relations to other persons (Beni,2018; Ger-gen,2009; Wang,2016) In this way, the actions, thoughts and feelings of the other are part of the process by which individuals construct, present and experiences themselves Thapan (this volume) elaborates a relational conception of selfhood and knowledge The capacity for self-knowledge is part of the process of relating to others Thapan elaborates this thesis to include the dimension of how our engagement with our own selves facilitates the possibility of meaningful relation and engagement with others Some version of Thapan’s thesis is represented in each contribution to the present volume

The final model (14) in this quadrant consists of

en-compassingforms of relating in which the selfhood of one individual subsumed by asymmetrical obligations of a hierarchical relationship to the other Encompassing rela-tions among people are those that exist in relarela-tionships that are defined by asymmetry, hierarchy, social obligation, or

in relationships in which one person is responsible for the well-being of the other For example, in cultures that value

filial piety, individuals experience themselves in terms of their roles within relatively fixed hierarchies (Roland,

1988; Wang, 2016) Their actions are organized with respect to obedience to their parents, elders, ancestors and other figures of authority (e.g., and emperor) At the same time, the authority figure, by virtue of superior status, knowledge or divinity, is viewed as responsible for the well-being of the subordinate The authority is obligated to protect and advice, provide for and put into place practices that ensure the harmonious working of society Thus, the sense of self is organized in terms of the asymmetry that defines the relationship between subordinate and superior (see Aruta et al., this volume) The phenomenon of encompassment is not limited, however, to hierarchical relations In her analysis of the role of fame in the expe-rience of self, Maheshwari shows that people who are celebrated in the public eye often experience their sense of who they are ‘‘gobbled up’’ by the process As public images of famed individuals come to organize both public and private ways of relating, the boundary between the public and the personal becomes blurred; celebrated indi-viduals often find their identities to be increasingly under siege

Relations Among Identities and Identity Groups Persons are social beings who live and act with other people in societies This simple fact raises questions about the relation between individuals and groups Beyond the perennial problem of managing intergroup relations, this

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issue is made more salient by the increasing prevalence of

identity groups, political concerns about the relation

between power and selfhood, and struggles for recognition

by members of marginalized social groups In the last half

of the twentieth century, Western European culture went

through a dramatic transformation Social movements

emerged—namely the civil rights and women’s

move-ments—that were devoted to extending full rights to

members of previously disenfranchised groups At around

the same time, the psychological concept of identity

(Erikson, 1950) was introduced into the public sphere

(Moran,2015) As these movements proved successful, the

quest for social equality was extended to other

marginal-ized groups, such as LGBTQ groups, people with

disabil-ities and other groups

Over time, as the concept of identity gained cultural

currency, political concerns about group identity began to

take hold What began as a series of movements designed

to extend equal rights to individuals within disenfranchised

groups became transformed into the politics of identity and

recognition While people have always identified

them-selves within their in-groups, what was new was the idea of

seeking social equality on the basis of group identity—that

is, to justify political and socio-moral claims based one’s

identification with a group rather than on the basis of the

equality of individuals With this transformation, the

poli-tics of identity and recognition were born (Taylor,1994)

In the past decades, psychologists have increasingly framed

questions of self in terms of the categories of political and

social identity As this occurs, psychological theory and

research becomes increasingly (and perhaps inescapably)

organized in terms of the prevailing political concepts and

categories.3

Quadrant IV of Fig.1identifies different models of the

relation between identity groups in society Model (15)

represents the nature of identity groups in terms of the

structural dynamics of power and oppression distributed

throughout a given society In this model, societies are

organized in terms of structural systems of advantage and

disadvantage (Tatum, 1992; Wellman,1977) Such

struc-tural systems are not to be confused with individual

per-sons; they are institutionalized structures and processes

about which individual persons may or may not be aware

Structural advantage is indicated in Mode 15 in terms of the structures of power exerting downward control over disenfranchised identity groups, each of which seeks to equality through a process of dismantling existing systems

of arbitrary advantage

Models (16) and (17) provide alternatives a monolithic representation of the relation between power and

oppres-sion model Model 16 presents a variegated conception of

intergroup relations, while Model 17 depicts relations

among identity groups as mutually embedded What is

common to these latter models is the idea that structures of power and advantage are not monolithic; they are dis-tributed in diverse and non-obvious ways within any given social structure As shown in Model 17, structures of domination can occur between different constituents Power can be exerted in multiple ways Marginalized groups can marginalize each other; create hierarchies within groups; have conflicting and overlapping commit-ments; dominate and collaborate at the same time; and engage in different forms of relating with different identify groups Model 18 represents the diversity of group rela-tions in terms of a series of overlapping and embedded groups

Both Nayak (this volume) and Tara Chand (this volume) explore the process of resisting the fragmentation the self experiences in the face of political and social power These conceptions of self and their expression have been brought forth in breaks and dislocations in the relationships between South Asian Muslim women with dominant political and social systems (Tara Chand, this volume) and shared grief of black women (Nayak, this volume) In so doing, they entertain different conceptions of existing and possible relations between individual, community and the broader society In their work, they show that identity groups are not monolithic structures Their concerns not only overlap between and among groups, conflicting and mutually embedded allegiances occur within groups as well

Diversity and Cohesion

It is imperative to continuously reflect upon and renew our understanding of what it means to speak of self and iden-tity—especially in increasingly diversified, technologically mediated and interconnected world New expressions, ideas and experiences guide us to formulate and uncover emergent insights into the notions that have been central to human existence and to the subject matter of psychology Novel formulations of self arise as products of our shifting relations with others—shifts that occur as occur as a pro-duct of changing social, technological, economic and political conditions With such shifts come new forms of

3 This should not be surprising Categories of personhood have

always had political origins For example, the dominant concepts of

selfhood used in Western psychology have their origins in the

philosophical, scientific and political thinking of the Enlightenment.

One might suggest that, regardless of whether the entry of political

thinking into psychological science is seen as a cause for celebration

or concern, it is important to be reflexive about the socio-political

bases of psychological theorizing Without becoming aware of the

political dimensions of psychological scholarship, it is not possible to

make decisions about the role of such concerns in psychological

theorizing.

social mediation, which transform our sense of who we are

and who we can become How do we experience and

identify ourselves within the shifting medium of a mixing

and moving world? How do we make claims of agency and

identity against the resistance of traditional and established

forms of social and cultural life? How do I construct myself

anew in the context of shifting social, cultural and

tech-nological circumstances? Are there ways to reconcile

competing claims to identity as they are made within and

between persons, groups and societies? Both theoretical

formulations and experiential reflection form a medium for

understanding the processes by which we construct and

express self and identity Some provide us with new ways

to understand who we are now while others unlock

uncharted possibilities Theoretical and experiential

explorations of multiplicity are essential if we are to move

toward a more unifying pluralism—a way people to

cele-brate commonalities together while simultaneously

respecting their uniqueness The purpose of this issue is to

rethink what it means to speak of self and identity in an

increasingly diversified, technologically mediated and

interconnected world

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