Characters in contexts: Identity and personality processes that influence individual and family adjustment to brain injury

Abstract

Along history of thought in psychology explores the concept of personality as a nonunitary phenomenon. In William James' (1890/1950) writing on the structure of self, the concepts of and potential are fundamental to his conception of the nature of self-organization. These seminal thoughts have been elaborated by thinkers as diverse as Freud (1962) and Jung (for review, see Fordham, 1976) and have received contemporary support in the experimental work of Hazel Markus (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). These ideas have had an enormous influence on applied work in psychotherapy where many scholars have drawn on the concept of self-pluralism as an important avenue for intervention (e.g., Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951; Jung, 1933, 1969) with a variety of current writers focusing on inner child work, especially as applied to cases of sexual and physical abuse and trauma (Bass & Davis, 1988; Bishop & Grunte, 1992). People typically experience a sense of a unified self characterized by an I or a me as well as a coherent autobiographical narrative. This narrative rests on memories of previous experiences, which have been interpreted in the context of social, emotional, and cognitive parameters that contribute to the nature as well as to the understanding of these events. This unified sense of self is dynamic and functions to reflect a variety of life experiences and developmental processes. For example, one may have a different sense of self in the context of being a college student than one has as a parent. Despite this unified awareness of self, perspectives from philosophy (Locke, 1956; Humphrey & Dennet, 1989; Barresi, 1999), anthropology, (Rosaldo, 1995) sociology (Goffman, 1959, 1986), psychology (Markus & Nurius, 1986; McAdams, 2001; Bruner, 2002; Lewis, 2001), and neuroscience (Sperry, 1985; Levy & Trevarthen, 1976; Cimino, Verfaellie, Bowers, & Heilman, 1991; Vanderhaeghen 1986) converge on a conclusion that much of the dynamic nature of self-definition rests on the existence of multiple selves. These various selves are present and can interact with each other and with the world in a dynamic and seamless fashion under normal circumstances. They are associated with narrative constructions that serve to define and contextualize them. As Bruner (2002) stated: There is no such thing as an intuitively obvious and essential self to know, one that just sits there ready to be portrayed in words. Rather, we constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter, and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future (p. 64). A variety of models have been proposed to further elaborate on the concept of multiple selves. These range from the notion of (Markus & Nurius, 1986) to a more formal proposition that there are well-developed that compose normal personality and that emerge as actors depending on the context and task at hand (Watanabe-Hammond, 1988; Kramer, 2000). These perspectives are not mutually exclusive, nor do they necessarily presuppose a continuum: conceivably, different characters (in Watanabe-Hammond's framework) could have alternative possible selves that could be called upon or invoked under different circumstances. As William James and others have described, an individual has many options available regarding the self, and these options are constrained in myriad ways by genes, environment, and their interaction. For example, the thin self may be in the realm of possibilities for some but not others. The extent to which such a self is possible is then subject to social and cultural dynamics that render it desirable or undesirable. In the process of developing a self-concept, we attach ourselves to some of these possible selves and not to others, hence creating an emotionally-charged identification with their viability. …