#extended self

[seolf]

If you have grown up with a self-centered parent (and I’ll warn you, the parents who say they are selfless and consistently remind you about everything they are doing for you are the most self centered), because they aren’t really concerned with your needs, you inevitably have to fight for your own self-hood as well. You cannot conceptualize of a way to merge; you can only conceptualize of being swallowed by something else ... [C]loseness is the primary priority in both of your [lives]. This creates the only true safety in relationship. You cannot hurt something that you take as part of yourself without hurting yourself. But not being able to conceptualize of this ... we avoid merging ... We fight to keep ourselves separate but in relationship. We cannot risk the trust of giving ourselves to the other person and them giving themselves to us ... We are trapped in Ego and society supports it.

Teal, Swan. (2019). What is your definition of love?  via TUMBLR USER smelsea’s POST. 

[seolf]

Socialization does exist, but … as nondeterministic (in fact highly negotiable and in flux); unindividuated (a larger social process which exists outside of individual children, parents or institutions); and—as a necessary consequence—at least in some sense unintentional (there is no actor which could be credited with the ‘act’ of socialization). Another important difference … [is] the child as an active participant in the socialization, and not a passive subject of categorization.

Tumblr user BAEDDEL. (7 Oct 2019). SOCKPUPPAC asked: ‘I just got out from the terf pit...’. ❡14.

[seolf]

It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little–have few verbal means. Eloquence–thinking in words–is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sign, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

Sontag, Susan. (1976). As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980. †401. via TUMBLR USER the-book-diaries’ TEXT.

[seolf]

FIGURES 3.4 & 3.6
 The western v. Chinese concepts of the self. Scollon & Scollon (2011:63) adaptation of Hsu (1983): 
“Rugged Individualism Reconsidered: essays in psychological anthropology.”

[seolf]

An apology is a gesture through which an individual splits himself into two parts, the part that is guilty of an offense and the part that dissociates itself from the delict and affirms a belief in the offended rule.

Goffman. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. †113.

[seolf]

Do I contradict myself? Very well then …. I contradict myself; I am large …. I contain multitudes.

Whitman, Walt. (1881). Song of Myself. via TUMBLR USER aseaofquotes’s IMAGE.

[seolf]

... [E]volutionary psychology would seem to corroborate ... Symbol-formation has an adaptive function. It promotes our grasp on reality as well as enriching our appreciation of the miracle of existence.

Stevens, Anthony. (2011). Psychological Notes: `The penis is itself a phallic symbol!'. The Independent. 

[seolf]

[Identity is] the active negotiation of an individual’s relationship with larger social constructs, in so far as this negotiation is signaled through language and other semiotic means. Identity, then, is neither attribute nor possession, but an individual and collective-level process of semiosis.

Mendoza-Denton, Norma. (2002). Language and Identity. p. 475.