All Ages and None: Commentary on Helene Moglen's Ageing and Transageing

Helene Moglen's article is especially welcome, given the paucity of psychoanalytic reflection on ageing. She usefully describes possible ways of managing the losses of ageing through accessing the multiple, decentered self-states embedded in our personal histories. However, I have some queries on her use of contrasting psychic topologies. In particular I wonder whether she is sometimes in danger of seeing images of former selves as being associatively “recovered” in the work of mourning that might be better seen as the more illusive “production” of presumptively anterior contexts and states of mind in the present. I also question how successfully Moglen's positioning of her notion of “transaging” somewhere between “transgender” and “transsexuality” serves to loosen up the vicious binary between “young” and “old. I would appreciate closer attention to the dreaded “feminization” of old age, noting the toxic sexism permeating cultures of ageing. Nevertheless, Moglen offers an excellent opening into this troubling topic.     

Generational Sexualities,Subterranean Traditions,and the Hauntings of the Sexual World: Some Preliminary Remarks

In this article I argue that generation is a relatively neglected concept for thinking about both the social and the sexual, and that symbolic interactionism has much to offer in developing our understanding of this idea. Using both personal experience and the wide‐ranging literature on sexualities, I explore the role of synchronic and diachronic time in organizing both the flow of sexual lives and the hierarchy of age‐sexual orders. The core organizing concepts are those of generational sexualities and subterranean traditions; the approach is seen to provide a further complication to standpoint, queer, and intersectionality theory. The core of the article suggests an array of sensitizing concepts and research areas that might sharpen future analyses. Schematic and exploratory, the article draws from a wide range of examples. Careful the things you say, Careful the tale you tell, Children will listen. Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods (1986) Reality exists in a present … we look forward with vivid interest to the reconstruction, in the world that will be, of the world that has been for we realize that the world that will be cannot differ from the world that is without rewriting the past to which we now look back. George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present (1932) Generations are in a constant state of interaction. Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (1997) How long is a man's life, finally? A thousand days or only one? One week or a few centuries? How long does a man's death last? And what do we mean when we say, “gone forever”? Brian Patten, “So Many Different Lengths of Time,” Selected Poems (2007) To study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it. Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters (1997)     

Reconceptualizing the Self Phenomenon: Toward an Emic Conception of the Self

In sociology, the self has been conceptualized as either self‐concept or the process of self‐reflectivity. Both notions of the self have been traced to the early thinkers—William James, Charles H. Cooley, and George H. Mead—who laid the foundation for the scientific study of the self phenomenon. In this article, I propose a revised conception of the self based on a re‐reading of the classics. I argue that the self is related to but not the same as self‐concept or the process of self‐reflectivity. The self is an emic object, that is, the entity that one takes oneself to be. More specifically, the self is the empirical existence of an individual perceived by the individual to be his or her own. As the identity the individual finds in his or her existence in a world shared with others, the self is a product of both self‐reflection and self‐enactment. Implications of this reconceptualization for some broad issues related to the self phenomenon are also discussed.     

Creativity and the Self: A Self Psychological Approach to Art and Healing

This paper explores the contributions of Heinz Kohut and self psychology to the conceptualization of art and healing on an individual and cultural level. The roles of normative narcissistic development, selfobject experience, and empathy are emphasized in the formation and maintenance of creative expression. Crayton Rowe’s addition of the undifferentiated selfobject is also explored. The lives and work of legendary artists, as well as a case example from the ongoing clinical treatment of a creative professional, provide illustration.     

Monastic Blessings: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Self

This paper explores the development and maintenance of the self among members of an Orthodox Christian monastery. The principal communicative resource by which members effect their unique social order, the blessing sequence, is interpreted as a spiritual technology for altering processes of reality construction, especially those associated with agency and selfhood. The deconstruction and reconstruction of the monastic self is essential to their membership in the community and a necessary preparation for the achievement of their shared objective: immediate experience of Ultimate Reality. This study demonstrates the interdependence of communicative practice and psychological experience and suggests that specific interactive routines may be identified and enacted in order to secure desirable psycho-social outcomes.     

Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self

Abstract

In Australia, systematic and widespread provision of family-support services is just 30 years old. The present paper traces some of the developments, recurrent tensions, and themes in family-support services, principally in Victoria, over those decades, drawing attention to challenges for social workers’ continuing participation in the development of family services.     

Addictions and the Self

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental, strengths-based pro gram for the treat ment of sub stance abus ing offend ers un der crim i nal jus tice su per vi sion in the United States Pro ba tion De part ment. The program is based upon new phys i o log i cal ev i dence that links ad die tions to the ex perience of hope, and consistent research that identifiesself-efficacy, futu rity and self-es teem as cru cial el e ments in re cov ery. Rooted in con cepts taken from Jung ian and Maslowian ideas of the Self, the program uses techniques gleaned from Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and Ericksonian hyp no sis to pro vide a con tin u ing sense of Self and the pos si bil ity of pos i tive, self-ac tu al iz ing fu tures. This ar ti cle ex plores the the o ret i cal back ground of the pro gram, spe cific tools em ployed, pro gram re suits and sugges tions for fur ther research     

Emotions and the Self: Depression and Identity Change

Emotions hold a central place in sociological understandings of the self, both as a facet of identity management and as an outcome of self‐processes. We extend identity theory and research on emotions by suggesting that emotion may be another source of identity change and examine this using a longitudinal sample of newly married couples, focusing on person identities and depression. We find that individuals' identities change to become consistent with others' views. We also find that the more depressive symptoms that individuals experience, the more negative their identities. The identity meanings that change, however, are different for men and women.     

The Branded Self:

This investigation makes the argument that to a considerable degree, our sense of our selves is connected to the way advertising helps us shape our identities and focuses our attention on brands as a way of signifying who we are to others. My point of departure is Norbert Wiley’s The Semiotic Self (1995:37). I will use Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to deal with Wiley’s notion that the self involves an internal conversation in which the present self (the “I”) talks about the past self (the “me”) to the future self (the “you”). The branded self discusses some important concepts in semiotic analysis and relates them to the notion of the “self” and then to other matters, such as branding.     

Temporal Vertigo: The Paradoxes of Ageing

“I don’t feel old,” most older informants proclaim. That affirmation tells us much about the stigma surrounding old age. It tells us also about the temporal vertigo we face as we age if contemplating the multiplicity of continuities and discontinuities over time. Ageing is of interest to those who have always been skeptical about any notion of the “true self,” allowing us to puzzle over how the account the old give of themselves—if anyone is still listening—will rely upon their ability to incorporate differing versions of the self, woven into the volatilities of memory and fantasy. I explore some of the radical ambiguities in the speech or writing of those thinking about ageing. While pondering the fluctuating ties between younger and older selves, I also venture into the hazards of desire in old age and the apparently contrasting situation of ageing men compared with ageing women. Old age may no longer be the condition that dare not speak its name, but it remains the identity about which most prefer to stay silent.     

Wholeness of Self Workshops:

No abstract available for this article.     

Reconstructing the Self: photography, education and disability

Despite the centrality of photography to an understanding of the self and others in contemporary culture, its educational significance has been largely ignored. This paper examines the potential of photographic work as a means of exploring and reconstructing understandings of disability in an educational context. The particular empirical focus is a short project in the context of a Foundation arts course. It is argued that the practical work produced by students on the project enabled them to understand how their identities are constructed within photographic discourses such as charity advertising and family photography, and to begin to reconstruct new understandings of the self. It is also argued that this goes beyond progressivist pedagogies or photography as a kind of art therapy.     

Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self

Goffman has been read as arguing that selves are no more than images created in conformity with situational expectations. I read Goffman as saying that the reality of selfhood is not an image, but a psychobiological proces shaped by signs and symbols. Seen in this way, the reality of the self is evident, as Goffman suggested, not in conformity but in moments of feeling, resistance, and choice. Drawing out what is implicit in Goffman, this article proposes that all forms of signifying behavior, including self-presentations, are means to sustain the coherence of the self. For this to work, however, people must, as Goffman pointed out, trust each other to respect the rules governing signifying behavior and must care about the feelings attached to selves. The article argues that the inequalities of so-called postmodern society are undermining the trust and care on which the interaction order and coherent selfhood depend. Goffman's ideas about the self are used to develop an optimistic critique of the conditions that have produced these pernicious trends.     

Mediating the Self: The Case of Sue

This article is a response to the case study presented by M. C. Rehfuss (2003) regarding a client, Sue, who is experiencing discord in her career as a mediator. A conceptualization of the client and additional areas for client exploration are presented. Five steps of a constructivist career counseling approach are applied to the case to assist Sue with experiencing optimal functioning in her career through her proactive commitment to her life theme of mediation.     

Intimacy and the Relational Self

This paper is a review of current ideas about intimacy and some ideas of my own about definitions of intimacy which come from a desire for respectful, egalitarian, lively and challenging relationships. I suspect that many current ideas about intimacy are overly influenced by the culture of romantic love, in which intimacy is portrayed as the warm, all encompassing feelings of unconditional love, where never a cross word is said. For me, intimacy includes all those feelings of closeness and warmth, but also those moments of brutal honesty, extreme anger, standing up for oneself and saying no. The myth that intimacy is easily obtained, and always pleasant, will be challenged in this paper.     

Framing the Self

The meaning of a photograph depends on the story we tell about it. In the case of portraits, these narrative frames shape the self we impute to the sitter. The interiority of the portrait subject, the inner character we imagine is revealed in the photograph, is a result of what we know about photographic portraits, about the sitter, about the photographer, and about the context in which the image was made. Likewise in everyday life, the selves we impute to others are infected by similar processes of narrative framing. Who we are known to be depends not only on self‐presentations but on the stories within which those self‐presentations are placed.