Personal Identity

The need for validation, together with identification, helps the child to create its social identity, since these states of mind are based on jealousy. In comparison, the need to be authentic, together with self-absorption, help the child to create its individual identity, since these states are based on narcissism.

Ground State of Identity

The person is unaware of how his identity is constructed. This is because what is at work here is the subconscious mind. It is the subconscious mind that creates the sense of identity, not the conscious mind. Hence the emotions and states of mind that create identity are quite different from what a rational analysis might presume to be the cause. A rational analysis can do no more than produce an idealised version of identity, which simply mirrors what the thinker would like it to be.

Personal identity is formed by certain sequences of states of mind. The change from one stage of a sequence to the next stage is caused by a switch of emotion. In the sequences that I am going to describe, the emotions that switch are love and hate. Love and hate are complementary, or binary, emotions. The switching changes the emotion that the person is currently feeling. For example, the person may be experiencing guilt. Guilt is a compound emotion and is the combination of self-pity and self-hate. When the factor of self-hate changes to love, guilt changes to jealousy, which is another compound emotion and is the combination of self-pity and love.
Hence in this example, guilt (= self-pity + self-hate) changes to jealousy (= self-pity + love).

Now I can explain the ground state of personal identity. It is either love, or hate, or a mixture of both of them. A happy childhood will be based on love, though I consider that this state is not very common in modern times. More usually, childhood is a time of confusion and mental disturbance for the child, so that the ground state is hate, more often than not. Why hate? Hate occurs when the child is subjected to trauma, in some degree. If trauma occurs to the young child, its emotional responses to the parent who caused the trauma become contradictory. The influence of bonding [³] makes the child love the parent, but the experience of trauma makes it hate the same parent. Some children show this contradiction, sometimes being affectionate in their behaviour, and sometimes being hateful. Other children hide the contradiction, and this was the situation with me as a child. Hate is a very unpleasant emotion for an adult, and even more so for a child. The child tries to avoid hate by repressing it. The long-term effect of repression is that the child, as it grows up, is conscious that it loves the parent, and is unaware that subconsciously it also hates the same parent.

How do I know this? Up to my 40s I used to think that I was a nice guy, avoiding being unpleasant to anyone and being affectionate to my mother. Then my psycho-analysis began. After a few months I became aware of my subconscious mind. Then suddenly I became aware of an intense depth of hatred to my mother. I was shocked by this realisation, not just by the fact of hating her, but also by the intensity of it. It didn’t fit my self-image. How could I hate mother when I loved her? This hatred did not come from any recent happenings, but from my childhood. How did I come to hate mother when I was a child?

Two Ways of handling Hatred

The mind of the young child is very immature, and yet the child has to interpret its relationships with other people and the situations that it finds itself in. As can be expected, it sometimes makes mistakes in these interpretations. The most significant mistakes occur when these involve its parents and other significant adults; then the child may suffer a trauma. This is most likely to happen in its first few years of life.

I consider that the psychological trauma that happens due to the child’s mistaken interpretations of unpleasant emotional experience is the most prevalent kind of childhood trauma, and it is this kind that I focus on in my articles. I am interested in trauma that is unintentional. My analysis still applies when abuse is intentional and the child’s interpretations are correct.

The child feels the normal range of human emotions, which includes those of love and hate. The child feels its emotions at a greater intensity than the adult does, since it has not yet created psychological defences that can mitigate any distress or even shield it from distress.

Infancy trauma always generates a long-term response: it deepens the intensity of hatred within the child. If trauma is mild, then the hatred is also mild; if trauma is severe, then likewise the hatred will be intense too. Hate can be used in two ways: it can be directed at oneself, thereby producing self-hatred, or it can be directed at other people. These responses of hate lead to the emotions of guilt (in self-hate mode) and pride (in mode of hatred of other people) respectively - the mode of a compound emotion is just the emotional factor that is activated. The child desperately needs to withdraw from hate, especially the self-hate. So it flees into either identification or self-absorption.

I look at both the ways of directing hatred. First I consider the flight from self-hatred, and then I turn to the deflection of hatred away from oneself to other people.

a). The Flight from Self-Hate
The child’s identification with the parent is maintained by jealousy (in love mode). But the jealousy does not create identification. The emotional sequence that ends in jealousy begins with hate. The child flees from self-hatred by switching to guilt (in self-hate mode). The act of identification then enables the child to switch from self-hate to love, resulting in guilt switching to jealousy. Now jealousy becomes the derivative basis of identification. In the diagrams that follow, I use the phrase “leads to” to indicate the direction in which states of mind change.

The sequence of emotions that generate identification is:
Self-hate leads to guilt (mode of self-hate), which then leads to jealousy (mode of love).

The identification with the parent enables the child to switch from guilt to jealousy. The child has created a breathing space for itself from the suffering of trauma. After trauma the child hates itself; after identification it jealously loves the parent.

The pattern of identification with a parent lays the foundation for future episodes of identification with other significant people. Identification may bring with it excitement and passion, as when the young adult jealously follows his rock-star idols. But when a psycho-analysis probes underneath all the veneer it reveals that identification is always a response to subconscious mental pain.

b). The Deflection of Hate away from Oneself
If the child does not hate itself, then another response is possible. After trauma the child directs its hatred at the mother (or other significant adult), and generates pride in the mode of hatred. Pride = vanity + hatred of others.
Pride in the mode of hate is not much of an alternative to guilt, since this mode of pride is always conducive to thoughts of violence. Now the child flees into self-absorption. The initial emotional basis of self-absorption is pride in the mode of hatred towards others. The act of becoming self-absorbed then switches this hate to love, so that narcissism arises. Narcissism = vanity + love.

The sequence of emotions that generate self-absorption is:
Hate leads to pride (mode of hate), which then leads to narcissism (mode of love).

Again the child has created a breathing space from the suffering of trauma. After trauma the child hates the mother; after self-absorption it loves itself.

Infancy trauma is a permanent reality for the sensitive infant. In order to survive, it has to originate long-term responses that can shield itself from this pain. Identification and self-absorption are the only responses that can do this and so in its ever-changing world the child swings between them. If these responses fail in later life, under the stress of social relationships, then the child (now become an adult) may slide into periods of deep depression and even madness. Therefore infancy trauma has the effect of producing profound changes in the character of the child, the degree of change being related to the intensity of the trauma.

End States

Infancy trauma can lead either to guilt and then to jealousy, or to pride and then to narcissism. The first diagram is the responses to childhood trauma, or what I also call infancy trauma in order to emphasise that the earlier the trauma occurs, the more intense are the effects of it.

Infancy trauma always remains a subconscious emotional dynamic for the adult (unless he or she can resolve it). Being a dynamic means simply that it usually keeps the subconscious mind energised. No one of the two responses is final; the adult can oscillate between jealousy and narcissism according to the current activity in the subconscious mind (whether that of identification or of self-absorption). But usually one response becomes favoured over the other one. The person either centres themself on jealousy or else on narcissism. Jealousy is the emotional basis of a person’s preference for being socially-orientated, whilst narcissism is the emotional basis of a preference for being an individual.

During my own self-analysis, when I abreacted [4] infancy trauma I created Diagram 1 as a speculative way of explaining what happened to me. It ends in jealousy and narcissism (temporarily). I subsequently verified empirically that these ideas are true. When I examine my relationships from the perspective of my emotional responses, guilt always arises before jealousy, and pride always before narcissism. [However, when I examine my relationships from a perspective of desire then the standard patterns of abreaction occur and produce different sequences] .

The diagram has to be continued to the right since jealousy and narcissism have two factors each. In the presence of anxiety, both jealousy and narcissism give rise to specific states of mind. Two of those states are egotism and transference [5]. See Diagram 2.

Egotism usually has a bad name in Western moral thought. This is due to a lack of understanding. The bad effects of egotism are due to the negative influences of anxiety. However, in general, egotism means individuality. Transference is a social product, focusing on social happiness and social power. Egotism centres on the search for individual happiness and the power to be an individual, independent of the authority of society. Transference is the binary (or complementary) attitude to egotism.

Jealousy (self-pity mode) + anxiety leads to the need for validation.
Jealousy (love mode) + anxiety leads to transference.

Narcissism (vanity mode) + anxiety leads to the need for authenticity.
Narcissism (love mode) + anxiety leads to egotism.

My interpretation of these results is that these sequences structure the person’s sense of identity, splitting it into two factors, that of social identity and that of individual identity.
Social identity starts from infancy trauma and finalises in transference and/or the need for validation. This can produce problems with dependency.
Individual identity begins from infancy trauma and finalises in egotism and/or the need for authenticity. This can produce problems with alienation and antagonism to the social authority of other people.

The two identities usually conflict. Social identity requires the person to lose his or her boundaries and become one of the group or the community; consensus is needed. Whereas individual identity requires the person to remove confusion from his or her mind, thereby removing social dependency; choice is desired. A person’s life becomes the drama produced by the interaction between their two identities.

Social Identity

Now I emphasise some arrangements of these sequences. Consider a male heterosexual child. I consider two aspects of his character: sexual structure and authority structure. Structure simply means the core states of mind that maintain any fixed orientation to life.

A child’s social identity links identification with transference. For the child, transference is the preferred pattern of parental attributes. I divide such attributes into two forms, those involving sexual matters and those involving authority matters. Sexual transference determines the child’s preferences in sexual attitudes, and authority transference becomes the kind of authority that he admires in the parents. These preferences continue into adulthood.

The states of mind of social identity are shown in the sequence that is given in Diagram 3a. Here, infancy trauma ends by fluctuating between transference and the need for validation.

c). Sexual Structure of Social Identity
A heterosexual boy identifies primarily with the mother. Now examine half of the sequence given in Diagram 3a. In this half of the sequence, infancy trauma ends in transference (that is, the sexual form of transference), forming Diagram 3b.

This sequence, ending in sexual transference (beliefs about sexuality), is the psychological basis of the Oedipus complex as it relates to the mother (the second part of the complex, the relation to the father, is optional – my relation to my father was one of envy rather than jealousy).

How is the sequence to be interpreted? In the first stage of bonding, the mother imprints her pattern of sexuality on the infant. Then trauma imparts intensity to the child’s identification with her; the intensity of identification depends on the intensity of trauma. The child ties his jealousy to the mother’s sexual image, so his feelings towards her always have a sexual component. The child, when it becomes an adult, will now find that for sustained passionate and intense sexual relationships to happen, his female partner will need to have similar character traits to his mother. Whereas transient relationships (or one-night stands) need not relate to the Oedipus Complex.

Freud’s postulation of this complex was not an imaginative fiction but a psychological reality. It forms half of the person’s social identity. Assuming that a homosexual boy identifies primarily with the father then the same sequence (but with the father replacing the mother in the primary identification role) becomes his structure of sexual identity. I generalise this view: the sequence from infancy trauma to sexual transference produces the child’s sexual identity.

However, sexual identity may become uncertain and changeable when anxiety becomes too intense over long periods of time. This often happens during times of fast changes in society, as the West witnessed during the 1960s-1970s. When anxiety is intense, new forms of sexual identity may be explored, so we witness the emergence of gender as a sexual indicator instead of the binary heterosexual labels of man and woman.

d). Authority Structure of Social Identity
The authority structure of social identity is the same sequence as that given in Diagram 3b, with the difference that transference is in its authority form.

The authority transference that is accepted by the child is the pattern of authority that is shown by the parent. Parental authority is usually ambiguous and variable. When it generates excessive anxiety in the child, then the child may swing between conformity and authoritarianism. Both responses are inharmonious methods of avoiding any feelings of self-hate rising into consciousness. In Western countries it is rather rare for a person to have a natural and harmonious sense of social authority, based on respect for others.

Individual Identity

The states of mind of individual identity are shown in the sequence that is given in Diagram 4a. Here, infancy trauma ends by fluctuating between egotism and the need for authenticity.

Consider half of the sequence given above. The focus on egotism forms Diagram 4b. This sequence is the psychological basis of a person’s assertion of his own authority. On this basis he rejects authoritarian attempts to control him.

The factor of pride may give a hard edge to this authority, and generate an attitude of intransigence to all social and political authority, whether repressive or merely incompetent. The need for authenticity may not be too troublesome to the child; but when it generates excessive anxiety then that child may swing between a sense of failure and a sense of achievement and creativity.

The difference between the two patterns of authority revolves around the issue of control. Authority transference makes a person want to control other people, whilst individual authority enables a person to control himself or herself.

Contrasts

I put these ideas together so that I can contrast social identity with individual identity.

Social identity is made up of sexual identity plus an oscillation between a sense of conformity and a sense of authoritarianism. This means that in some areas of his life the person will be conformist, whilst in other areas he will be authoritarian. Individual identity is made up of self-assertion plus an oscillation between a sense of failure and a sense of achievement and creativity.

Aloneness versus Loneliness

A basic difference between the two identities is illustrated by two terms: loneliness and aloneness. A person who focuses on authenticity will go his own way in life. He may feel awkward in the company of other people. At times he will feel aloneness: in these moments he is a loner (and may not desire company). For comparison, a person who focuses on receiving validation will act from the consensus of his groups. He may feel awkward on his own. He will sometimes feel loneliness (and yearn for the company of other people).

Aloneness is the desire to remain separate, to handle life’s problems on one’s own as an individual. It suits people who are “frontier” types, such as the American cowboy alone on the range with his horse and cows for weeks at a time. This kind of person can handle solitude, and can be more or less a hermit even in the midst of a city. Creativity – the ability to think or produce something completely new – is nearly always a product of individualism, not group activity. Many writers can only produce their novels by going into isolation and aloneness in a country cottage or farm in order to write. Being comfortable and contented with aloneness indicates that the need for authenticity is not causing any present difficulties.

Loneliness is the ache for social friends and partners. The person wants to be part of a group, in order to share his joys and sorrows. He likes to emotionally support his friends, so long as they emotionally support him too. If he has no friends, he feels like an outcast. Being comfortable and contented in the presence of friends indicates that the need for validation is not currently causing any difficulties.

Identity and Abreaction

Abreaction affects the person’s values within both the conscious and the subconscious minds. For me, during much of my life, social memories were not usually important. I assume that for the socially-centred person, memories of individuality are not usually important. This pattern is not conducive to harmony.

The significance of abreaction is that it temporarily interchanges the relative importance of the two identities, so bringing character weakness and lack of conviction into awareness. Abreaction forces me, an individual, to examine my neglected social values. Whereas abreaction forces the socially-centred person to examine his or her neglected uniqueness. Also, any ideas that seem to be important during catharsis usually carry a lot of impracticality and naiveté with them; the ensuing stages of resentment and bitterness help to make such ideas more realistic.

Now I can fit in the function of the two main types of abreaction, when the mental pain that they produce is not excessive. Character weakness is removed by resentment and bitterness. [However, when the mental pain is excessive, then undesirable attitudes such as racism may be intensified; this is a survival process, enabling a person to offload some of his distress onto other people].

Abreaction of guilt helps to strengthen social identity.
Abreaction of pride helps to strengthen individual identity.

[²]. My ideas on emotions are on the Home page, in the articles on Emotion. [2]

[³]. The previous section described the bonding process, beginning with Overview of Bonding. [3]

[4]. My ideas on abreaction are on the Home page, in the articles on Abreaction. [4]

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Ian Heath
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.	Needs and Complexes are the Basis of Identity I turn my attention to a feature of psychology that has been poorly understood by previous thinkers. This feature is that of how each person creates his sense of personal identity. When a deep psycho-analysis cuts through the romanticised view of identity, then its findings become disturbing. A sense of identity is based on deeply-held core beliefs about oneself, one’s relationships, and one’s place in the world. Core beliefs mean the beliefs that dominate the person for most of his or her life. How do these beliefs arise? Or to put this question slightly differently, how does the person’s sense of identity arise? In order to answer this question I turn to two psychological complexes that function within the mind, these complexes being the need for validation and the need to be authentic [¹]. And I add two other states of mind, those of identification and self-absorption. Identification occurs when the child models itself on a parent or a peer role model. Self-absorption happens when we immerse ourself in reverie and daydreaming, in meditation and contemplation, and when we do solitary creative work. Personal identity can be analysed into two distinct features, the person’s social identity and his/her individual identity. The emotional bases are different: social identity is based on jealousy whilst individual identity is based on narcissism. [²]
Sub - Headings
Two Ways of handling Hatred
End States
Social Identity
Individual Identity
Aloneness versus Loneliness
Identity and Abreaction
References

dot		Guilt	Identification with Parent	Jealousy

	Infancy Trauma

		Pride	Absorption in Self	Narcissism

dot					Transference

	Infancy trauma	Guilt	Identification with parent	Jealousy

					Need for Validation

dot					Egotism

	Infancy trauma	Pride	Absorption in Self	Narcissism

					Need for Authenticity