The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life; Kenneth J. Gergen, Pt. 1

Pg 8 – 1907 – Dr. Duncan McGougall weighed people right before and right after they die to prove the existence of the soul. He found that the human body weighs about 1 ounce less, therefore, the soul weighs one ounche

~ This is just kinda funny. Who would do that? How would you get people to say…sure…I’m going to die in five minutes…go ahead and weigh me now.

Pg 40 – “The immense attention devoted today to “cognitive processes” reveals a further dimension of the modernist view: man’s essence if rational.”

~ I think part of the reason why we say this is our inherent desire to categorize. It is easier to categorize our actions and say that they are rational than to come up with an explanation of why and how we are irrational. We take the easy way out…because it’s just easier.

Pg 46 – “Yet the means by which such tests demonstrate the “internal traits” of the person is as interesting as it is misleading.”

~ They are basically saying we cannot ever accurately measure any human trait because it is constantly changing and all traits are interrelated, therefore, we cannot measure one trait without measuring all of them. It relates to the ACT/SAT etc. It’s just an interesting idea that no measuring system is perfect because human’s change too much.

Pg 49 – “It is my central thesis that this immersion is propelling us toward a new self-consciousness: the postmodern. The emerging commonplaces of communication – such as those just cited – are critical to understanding the passing of both the romantic and modern views of the self. What I call the technologies of social saturation are central to the contemporary erasure of individual self.”

~ This relates back to media and the self. Media allows us more connections which makes more possible selves and causes us more cognitive dissonance to sort through the rankings of the selves.

Pg 49 – “However, we shall also see that as we become increasingly conjoined with our social surroundings, we come to reflect those surroundings. There is a populating of the self, reflecting the infusion of partial identities through social saturation. And there is the onset of a multiphrenic condition, in which one begins to experience the vertigo of unlimited multiplicity. Both the populating of the self and the multiphrenic condition are significant preludes to postmodern consciousness. To appreciate the magnitude of cultural change, and its probable intensification, attention must be directed to the emerging technologies.”

~ We reflect what we know, aka our surroundings. Populating the self relates to social saturation, when we have so many identities that we can no longer accurately reflect or portray all of them. Moreover, multiphrenicism relates to the idea that if we have too many possible selves and self-representations then we will create another form of cognitive dissonance just because we are overpopulated.

Pg 55 – “With the development of radio and film, one’s opinions, emotions, facial expressions, mannerisms, styles of relating, and the like were no longer confined to the immediate audience, but were multiplied manifold.”

~ Giving us more connections to more people creates more possible selves and self-representations because it enlarges our environment and social circle.

Pg 55 – “Television has generated an exponential increase in self-multiplication. This is true not only in terms of the increased size of television audiences and the number of hours to which they are exposed to social facsimiles, but in the extent to which self-multiplication transcends time – that is, in which one’s identity is sustained in the culture’s history. Because television channels are plentiful, popular shows are typically rebroadcast in succeeding years.The patient viewer can still resonate with Groucho Marx on You Ben Your Life or Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows on The Honeymooners.

~ One’s identity does not end when a show ends, it continues through television syndication and the possible selves one creates off of the television shows they love.

Pg 55 – “People can choose the actors they wish to identify with or the stories that will bring fantasies to life. Increasingly, this also means that in terms of producing a sense of social connection, any given actor may transcend his or her own death; viewers can continue their private relationships with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean long after the physical demise of the performers. With television, a personage may continue a robust life over eternity.”

~ Ditto from above, except with actors instead of shows.

Pg 58 – “Two of the greatest impediments to communicating, and thus relating over long distances are slowness and expense.” Goes on to talk about in 1850 it was 10 mph across the country. The telegraph system sped this up, but was more costly.

~ So the creation of more possible selves and self-representations, etc. relates to an ever-enlarging social environment. The larger the environment the more that can be created. So, with the onslaught of technology we have now we have more possible selves and self representations than ever before simply because of the speed and number of new social outlets.

Pg 61 – Talks about how a century ago relationships were limited to space. If a person moved away the relationship would slowly end because there would be no way to continue communication easily.

~ So this limited possible selves and self-representations because it limited social environment.

Pg 62 – Defines perseverance of the past: Relates to communication. We no longer have to lose social connections with others when we move. We can still relate to the past and have it live on.

~ Makes good sense. So our personal heritage continues to grow faster and faster because we have more connections, at the same time it floods the self with information because it has more and more past experiences to draw knowledge from.

Pg 62 – Defines acceleration of the future: Social relationships move faster now than before because we have more ways to socially connect with people.

~ Due to our proximity with social environments we have less and less time to reflect on social relationships because we do not break from them as much. We continue on talking and take away from important self-reflection and the self-knowledge that would come from that.

Pg 66 – “Interestingly, technology also intensifies the emotional level of many relationships. People come to feel more deeply and express themselves more fully in an increasing number of relationships.”

~ So the more we connect with our social environment the more connected and emotionally attached we become to it. Where does this draw our social attachment from? What loses the emotions we gain? Or do we just, in general, become more emotional?

Pg 69 – “In each case individuals harbor a sense of coherent identity of self-sameness, only to find themselves suddenly propelled by alternative impulses. They seem securely to be one sort of person, but yet another comes bursting to the surface – in a suddenly voiced opinion, a fantasy, a turn of interests, or a private activity. Such experiences with variation and self-contradiction may be viewed as preliminary effects of social saturation. They may signal a populating of the self, the acquisition of multiple and disparate potentials for being. It is this process of self-population that begins to undermine the traditional commitments to both romanticist and modernist forms of being. It is of pivotal importance in setting the stage for the postmodern turn.”

~ More information on populating the self and social saturation. Basically, it happens when a possible self that didn’t seem very possible suddenly happens, or when a low-ranking self-representation suddenly takes center stage. Emphasis on the suddenly.

Pg 71 – “We appear to each other as single identities, unified, of whole cloth. However, with social saturation, each of us comes to harbor a vast population of hidden potentials – to be a blues singer, a gypsy, an aristocrat, a criminal. All the selves lie latent, and under the right conditions may spring to life.”

~ Hidden potential = possible self.

Pg 71 – “The populating of the self not only opens relationships to new ranges of possibility, but one’s subjective life also becomes more fully laminated. Each of the selves we acquire from others can contribute to inner dialogues, private discussions we have with ourselves about all manner of persons, events, and issues. These internal voices, these vestiges of relationships both real and imagined, have been given different names: invisible guests by Mary Watkins, social imagery by Eric Klinger, and social ghosts by Mary Gergen, who found in her research that virtually all the young people she sampled could discuss many such experiences with ease.” Goes on to mention that these guests/ghosts were often family members, close friends, religious figures or celebrities they had never met.

~ So our self-reflection takes place inside of our complete self with the help of our possible selves and self-representations. Since some of our possible selves are slightly impossible/imagined, we can have conversations with people that are no longer around or have never been around (dead parents, celebrities, Jesus).

Pg 72 – Talks about how ghosts/guests are there for conversation, contemplation, role models, standards of behavior, bolstering beliefs, and self-esteem.

~ So when we do not have actual social environments with real people to talk with we create our own social environments inside of ourselves to give us what we need. Part of the intravidual maybe? We create another self in order to help us balance all of our other selves.