What about me

Paul Verhaeghe

Introduction
- Confrontation with identities that are different to us, generate a feeling of
uncertainty.
- Our identity is perceived as a result of comparing us with others alternatives
identities.
- Now a days, identities are constructed in relation with global and international
references whereas in the past it happened more locally.
- Is argued that a feeling of superiority would be the repetitive aspect in many
stereotypes.
- The highlighted differences can be attached to exterior characteristics that are
inherent to the people, such as skin colour, but also to impositions that are created
by the establishment, as it is in the case of passports.
- The level of uncertainty that we have about our own identity can be measured by
the importance we attribute to the external characteristics.
- “identity is internal”
- The notion of finding the root of our identity through science is a repetition of
craniometry. A desperately idea that the truth of our identity can be found inside.
- The “nature of our identity” can be understood from the outside and changing world
rather than from the inside of our body.
- Rather that tried to understand the nature of our identity from the inside of our
body, we can look at it from the outside, “which act as a constant mirror of identity”

Who am I?
- Despite of the fact that we think ourselves as perpetuals and timeless, we tend to
ask to someone else (experts, psychologists) about the reasons of our presence.
- Our identities are a construction of our surroundings.
- We are shaped by ideas that come from the exterior world about ourselves. As in the
case of adoption, the surroundings transfer culture and frame the personality and
other characteristics.
- “Identity has more to do with becoming than with being”. Mirror neurons make us
to imitate demeanour and thinking of the others.
- We learn our feelings from the other perspective. What and why we feel and how to
deal with those feelings.
- Our identity is also shaped by the continuous tension between the necessity of
mirroring behaviour of the others and rejecting to be considered completely equals
to the others.
- “Separation and the corresponding quest for autonomy are as important for our
identity as identification because they allow us to develop an individuality through
opposition”
- “Identity is always the temporary product of the interplay between merging and
establishing a distance”.
- Our identity is shaped by the way that the outside mirror reflexes to us. If the
reflexions of the mirror show care through a relationship, the construction of our
identity has fundations.
 - The exterior ideas only can be assimilated through an initial relationship between
love and hate.
- “Sameness and difference”

What about me?

- There is a tension between believing that we are product of our brain genes and that
we also have original personalities.
- Neuroplasticity is one of the characteristics of the brain to change according of the
environment.
- Identification take place during mirroring. However, the mirror by we shaped our
personalities differ from one context to another.
- In conclusion we are a product of constant changes in our brain due to specific
environment.
- Genes can also be transformed according to the environment. Even in the case of
schizophrenia, only from 14 to 20 % of the risk can be attributed to genes and the
rest to environment.
- In the case of identity genes are the hardware that limits the software.
- Language is learned by the process of imitation and interaction.
- Each language has its own structure and it is product of an environment. The nature
of language is transmitted to child shaping the way that she thinks of herself.
- There are tendencies that come with the baby and these tendencies are reinforced
by the mirroring of the parents.
- We share the identical mirroring of our cultures and environments but at the same
time we are different by our own choices and the particular mirroring that we were
exposed.

Body versus group 18

- Early messages from our parents are also mirrored by their own contexts.
- Galen stated in the first century that our internal fluids were factors that influence
directly our temperament and health.
- Family narratives (family novel-Freud) are wishes and expectation for our own
future.
- Constructions of genealogical trees shows a deep interest to find out our identity
from our past. “Identity research”.
- The expectations for our external appearance, self-perception and social
achievements are socially constructed by our environment.
- “Family narratives” are part of bigger narratives. The idea of belongings to a specific
social group, to hold a particular status or even to have specific capabilities1 are
transmitted to us through the family narratives.
- However, the bigger the narrative the more unclear or undefined it becomes, due to
the complexity of the groups that are inside of one particular identity, i.e.

1
Positive and negative stereotypes as a reinforced or boost of capabilities, Asian students perform better in
maths.
 Nationalities. If we concentrate the size in a more specific group the narrative are
more likely to ‘shift’.
- The notion of a “true history” is almost always part of big narratives. Clearly, those
mythical histories are hold in vague context “whose origins are vague or mythical”
- “The fact that there are different narratives, producing different answers,
introduces a certain element of individual choice. And the richer the culture, the
mores answers- and thus identities- people can chose from.” This notion shows a
liberal perspective that we can just chose as we were in a shop. Bolivia, as most the
countries in the world, has always have a great composition of identities, not only
because of their indigenous component, but also because of their different
landscapes that show a total different every day routine. However, the narrative
imposed has been always the western and with the years, it create an antagonism
between all identities and the western identities. Clearly, most of the other identities
possible were left, not because of a simple choice, but because as means of survive.

SEL CONFIDENCE, SELF-RESPECT, SELF HATRED

- Our identity is produced by a constant contradiction of “(identifying with and
distance ourselves from the other)”. 22
- Some breaks in that construction produced a “self-alienation” feeling at which we
found our identity in conflict with our fundamental believes. As a result, we also can
hold conversation with ourselves, acting as the other who is precisely entitle to
judge us.
- Differences between personalities are constructed by the other. The other are who
interpret our behaviour and establishes if we are self-confident or with low self-
esteem. The external perception of a particular behaviour led to make description
about the inner-self of us. From an early age we are describe and organize within
different boxes, extrovert or introvert. These description form part of our evolution
as people.
- Two figures are important in the process of building our identity. The opposite sex
and the authority. Both shape our relationship with our bodies and the opposite sex.
(norms and values)

WHO SHOULD I BE (AND WHO OR WHAT NOT) 25

IDENTITY
- “Identity consist of a collection of characteristics that have been assigned to us by
the other. Together, they form a more-or-less coherent package of ideas about
where we come from and we’re going.”
- The construction of one self is developed by the other opinion and our direct
reaction to that. The contradiction of becoming what is told us to become and the
pressure of find our singularity somehow produce our identity. The ideas of our
ancestress and our hopes for the future are teach to us through all different
institutions (apparatus) that surround us. Our feeling of belongingness is reproduce
for an apparent coherent and organize discourses (narratives) based in small facts.
For instances, our feeling of belonging to a particular country can be reinforced by
the colour of our skin. The fragility of that feeling is clearly destroyed with the
experienced of immigrant’s children.
 - The Latin America’s identity was constructed through the reflexion and idealize
Europe and against of the EEUU. Bolivia was portrayed as the indigenous reservoir of
the region, that the reason of it extreme poverty, and the powerful countries were
always fighting against the stereotype of a Latin American left behind.
- The features of our identity, all the nuances, are the constitution of our particular
behaviour that make us visible to our environment.
- “So the current social debate about norms and values is nothing less than a debate
about identity”
- “each thinks its own doctrines superior, dismissing those others as backward or
decadent.”

AGGRESSION AND FEAR

- “The relationship with the other is based on various shared or contrasting factors,
such as gender, social class, skin colour, and clothing.” Social class and gender may
be the main differences in the Bolivian society. However, social differences are not
based necessarily on income, clothes or physical features, but in an adoption of a
narrative. Nowadays may be difficult to judge the income of a cholita by the feature
of her clothes. Also by the way of speaking may differ from the considered of an
elite.
- “A man in a tailor-made suit creates different expectations from a 30-year-old in a
T-shirt and baggy jeans” I don’t believe that kind of differences, I think is more a mix
of behaviour complemented by an specific type of clothes. Otherwise, the world
would be with a particular uniform. This expectation is too fragile, if someone can’t
speak properly or are out of context, the expectation is loose. The presence of a
person as a whole construction is retained.
- “Someone who too closely resembles us makes us want to distance ourselves, in
order to differentiate ourselves”
- “Visible differences express different identities, reflecting disparate values and
social relationship.” Not necessarily, in the Bolivian case, similar features are not
important, perhaps are more important the discourses that are repeated constantly
in the process of socialization. The identification with a kind of music, movies and
political ideology.
- “And when someone is too different, we either want to make them like us
(integration) or we want to be like them (if you can’t beat them, join them)”
- (Verhaeghe, 2014)
-