BEING & CARING, A PSYCHOLOGY FOR LIVING by Victor Daniels and Laurence J. Horowitz, 1976, 1984
Highlights from the book chosen by The Happy President.
CHAPTER THREE: SELF-DETERMINATION AND AUTHENTICITY
Our culture has taught us to value being self-determining: making our own choices about important events in our lives rather than having those choices made for us by others. That value is expressed in our desire to be authentic: to speak and act as who we truly are rather than shaping all our responses to fit other people’s expectations. Self-determination and authenticity are different sides of the same issue: Each requires the other for its full expression.
Each of us can learn to trust our own sense of what means most to us and accept it as our guise as we seek to find our own direction.
Relying upon anyone’s advice as to what you “should” or “shouldn’t” do will have you living borrowed pieces of other people’s lives instead of being responsible for your own life. No one is more suited to be you for you than you are.
When others respond with mistrust to my choices and actions, I can describe in the most caring way I know that I do appreciate their concerns and suggestions, but that as part of my own growth I have to be accountable to myself and to make certain decisions for myself. That may not “make everything all right,” but at least it opens the door to dialogue – especially when demonstrating my respect for them may help them to demonstrate greater respect for me.
Existentialist Martin Heidegger – “When we take refuge in the decisions of others it is not long before we think what others think, feel what others feel, and do what others do.”
Soren Kierkegaard used the term authenticity to refer to being in touch with our inner selves and acting from that full contact with who we are. To be authentic means to be true to myself. I cannot be authentic and put up a false front before others at the same time.
Being True To Ourselves
In each area of my life, I can ask, “How much room do I have to be myself in this situation? How much of the room I have do I use?”
It’s possible to be authentic when I’m not happy or comfortable as well as when I’m feeling good. When I’m lonely, for example, I don’t need to pretend that I’m not. If I reveal my loneliness to you, there’s at least a chance that we’ll touch each other in a way that has meaning for both of us. Even if we don’t, my attempt to communicate has intrinsic value. But if I keep silent when I want to tell you how I feel, we probably won’t make contact in more than a superficial way.
Steppingstones are significant turning points or periods in our lives – pleasant, painful, or neither – that brought us where we are today. They can help us recognize the “deeper than conscious” directions in which we move with our life currents.
Being authentic requires self-trust.
Being open with others can be frightening, for it increases my vulnerability and lessens my options for manipulation. In a way, I’m safer when you’re mystified by my cloaks, masks, and shadows, for then you seldom know just who or where I am.
If you and I are authentic with each other, we may become very close. The general principle is clear: To express yourself as you are, with minimal pretense, allows for a less stressful and more satisfying life.
Personal and Social Selves
Newborn infants have no roles to play. They just are, completely true to themselves. We could say that a newborn is entirely a personal self.
Conflict with and response to others lead to the beginnings of a social self. This early social self includes all of the personal self. Thus integrated, there’s nothing that the infant is unwilling to reveal to others.
The social self, or persona as Jung called it – a word that comes from the masks ancient Greek actors wore to symbolize the roles they played – serves two purposes: to make a specific impression on other people, and to conceal the inner self.
When people identify heavily with the persona and deny the rest of who they are, psychiatrist R. D. Laing (1969) speaks of a divided self.
We may stay locked into certain roles out of habit.
Each of us has the option to present ourselves in our social roles in ways that moves closer to who we are inside, so that our personal and social selves overlap more.
Acting As If
When I’m being authentic, I’m voicing my real wants and needs. When I’m concealing and manipulating, I’m testing you.
When I trust you to deal with me as I am, I communicate clearly who I am and what I want. When I act from the part of my social self that’s different from my personal self, I speak and act as if I’m thinking and feeling something other than I am.
When I’m stating clearly what I want, I’m likely to be decisive and direct. I’m in touch with my strength – and so are you.
Hypocrisy is a particular kind of as-ifery. It means being phony, presenting a public front of seeming to act in the service of higher principles than I really am. If I tell people I’m doing something because I want to help my community, or because it’s “the American Way,” when in fact my reason is because it helps my business or gives me a tax writeoff, I’m being hypocritical.
The Script
Psychiatrist Eric Berne speaks of the parental instructions we’ve received about how to act and be, and what to do with our lives, as our scripts (1961). Our scripts are also our own doing.
Until I realize that I’m acting out an obsolete script, I may be struck with some ineffective, unproductive, or even self-destructive behavior. When I follow a script that no longer fits me, I expend a lot of energy trying to bottle up the spontaneous flow of my life force. I don’t have to waste my energy in stopping myself. I can judiciously appraise where I have room to be myself in a fuller way and where I don’t.
HOW WE BECOME STRANGERS TO OURSELVES
Disconfirmation, Confirmation, and Pseudoconfirmation
Through my responses to what you do and say, I confirm or disconfirm your sense of who you are.
If significant others validate what you think, feel, and do, you’re encouraged to develop a secure, reliable sense of yourself. IF you get feedback that reinforces your own impressions, you learn to trust your ability to discern what’s going on around you. You’re likely to develop a clear sense of contact – of where you leave off and other people being, rather than becoming enmeshed in the sticky web of what Perls terms confluence, where you’re not sure of your boundaries.
But when others act in ways that deny y our actions and your perceptions of yourself and your world, you may become confused and uncertain about your identity. In order to keep the love and protection of significant others, you may choose to repress your questions and misgivings and agree with their insistence that they know you better than you know yourself.
What’s different about words and actions and confirm and those that disconfirm? A confirmatory response, say Laing, acknowledges your action – though it doesn’t necessarily agree with it. Disconfirmation, by contrast, has a tangential quality. My response appears to deal with your concern, but actually it deals with an aspect of the matter that concerns me – not the one that concerns you.
An especially subtle and fascinating process is that of pseudoconfirmation. This is pretense at confirmation, giving teh appearance of it without the substance. I tell you who you are, then I confirm my definition of you. I induce you to accept my ideas about you, then confirm your attempts to apply them to yourself.
“A friend is a person who leaves you with all your freedom intact but obliges you to be fully waht you are.” In that spirit, in being authentic, I don’t want to intrude on your authenticity.
Carl Rogers describes an attitude that he terms “unconditional positive regard,” which he defines as “an atmosphere with…demonstrates ‘I care’; not ‘I care for you if you behave thus and so’” (1961). This kid of acceptance is not so easy. It can take hard work to set aside my goals for you – what I want for you and what I think would be good for you – and leave you room to be yourself. But it opens the way for me to know you as you are.
The Happy President 