The idea behind our identity and ‘self’ seems like a trivial one at first sight. We are all assigned a name on birth and that becomes a huge part of our identity. People know you by your name, right? They ‘identify’ you with it and it becomes a part of your self. But if you really think about it, the pursuit of understanding the nature of self and the identity associated with it, are really complex.
Self, is just a representation of the identity and identity is the sum total of all the attributes of a person. Identity of a person includes both the quantitative traits (name, age, sex, height, weight) as well as the qualitative traits (what kind of person he is, preferences, nature).
You must be wondering why I’m giving you a lesson in human psychology. Well, I needed to go into all that so that I am able to explore the topic of this article which is, do we all have multiple people within us?
This idea has been around for quite a while now in psychology, philosophy, social science and even marketing. By multiple people, I don’t mean that we all have multiple personality disorder. No, while it is true that we show signs of different ‘selves’, it is nothing to worry about as it might be just part of being human beings, I suppose. So, what are these different selves?
Ideal Self
We all have this image in our heads. An image about who we want to be as a person and how life should be. For some people this image is a little foggy and for some it is crystal clear. In any case, we want to become ‘someone’.
This is what is called the ‘ideal self’. Every person assigns different importance and value to different characteristic traits. Some people want to loved and respected while some people want to be feared. That sort of thing.
So, everyone’s ideal self is different as people want different traits for themselves depending on a number of factors. The ideal self is also heavily influenced by a mentor (if any) or any other person we look up to.
Whether or not we ever attain our ideal self or if we do, to what degree, depends on our dedication and willingness to change. It is not much different to achieving other goals that we set for ourselves in life.
Actual Self
As the words suggest, this is the real you. It incorporates absolutely everything that makes you, you. It can be a totally nonsensical thing or it can be a really meaningful thing but it includes absolutely everything because the smallest of things contributes to your self.
The problem here, however, is that most people aren’t aware of their actual self. That’s right. We like to think that we know ourselves better than anybody else and of course that sounds logical but our own mind doesn’t see ourselves for who we truly are.
It’s not that we live in denial. Of course we don’t. We are aware of a lot of our traits and we know our dominant nature very well, but in many areas, we are also mistaken. That is why you hear many people say that they want to discover who they are which is totally fine as one should be clear as to his true self. Only then can one begin the journey towards the ideal self.
Perceived Self
Things get a little tricky here. Different scholars and psychologists will explain this differently but let me tell you how I have come to understand this. So, this third category depends on two vantage points. One is our own and one is that of any other person.
Let’s start with perceived self from an individual’s viewpoint. This might not be the case with everyone and the degree to which this happens also depends from person to person. Perceived self is an image we create of our self and we perceive that image to be our actual self, while in truth, it is nothing more than living a lie. You might be thinking how a person can be wrong about his own traits or nature, but you would be surprised how often this happens. For example: a person might ‘think’ that he is humble but in actuality he is a highly arrogant person.
Perceived self from an other person’s viewpoint is different altogether. It simply means how different people perceive you differently. There are many people involved in our lives. All these people will have a wide range of opinions about you as a person. There will be a lot of similarities (these are your truest traits) but there will be a lot of varying, often opposing opinions about you. This is affected by how we behave differently with different people not because we are shallow but because it is human nature.
So, you can see that our ‘self’ that we think is simple and something that is only 1 layer deep, is in fact multi-dimensional and vastly complex. As always, humans remain the subject of great mysteries and much intrigue.
The above are my personal thoughts, observations and opinions on the matter that are also influenced by theories relating to said topic. I do not intend to pass these as facts. I would love to hear your opinions on the subject down below. If you liked what you read, please give this post an upvote and follow me for more. Thank you! :)