The freedom of identity a technically advanced consumer society facilitates (identity commodified / personal paralysis packaged as endless novelty) contains within it the anaesthetic that neutralizes a more valuable freedom, the freedom of resistance against an orientation towards the self that dictates that a self must consume even the self and in as many flavours as possible in order to fully experience itself. And is directed to do so through the conduits of mass media, celebrity culture, and social engineering technologies. — Baden

Is your opening OP concerned with, at least in part, the subtle ways that high-tech industrial societies subvert organized opposition (specifically, opposition to its meta-narratives for GDP productivity), both individual and collective, with incentives for egotistical self-involvement compatible with its baseline goal, promotion of materialistic consumerism. Under this influence, the united front against the tyranny of the elite ruling class is supplanted by being "cool," which means competing for the top spot amongst the property-laden, gadget-crazy, leisure time centered ruling class parading their egos across mass media via movies and music videos?

This is certainly one result of the process I'm describing (part of the immunization of society against internal opposition) which is that the commodification of identity proceeds through creating the need for a self by exploiting and widening the gap between self and identity/ies. This to me is the logical conclusion of the intersecion of invasive social media technologies, the profit motive, and consumerism.

Consumerism advances through the creation of new needs. If you want to sell deodorant, you must create a need for it. One way to do this is to make people feel unhappy with their natural odours, regardless of any reasonable justification for this. Marketers fill the gap here between reason and consumption. This is not particularly controversial or even always bad if looked at from certain perspectives (technological progress, economic growth etc).

But if you want to sell selves in the form of identities in order to promote engagement with social platforms, the process should facilitate making people unhappy with their selves in a more holistic sense. This does seem undesirable and it's not hard to see how keeping up with the Jones's might become destructive in an online environment where as you so well put it:

being "cool," ... means competing for the top spot amongst the property-laden, gadget-crazy, leisure time centered ruling class parading their egos across mass media via movies and music videos — ucarr

So, if we accept the need for a stable and strong self is more sustainably and organically met through effortful cognitive engagement with social forces--such that the result is more skewed towards character in its general sense--rather than through quick easy fixes facilitated by the endless roles/characters that media try to sell us then the curent situation is at best well short of what we should be aiming for and at worst a self-fulfilling process that may have very negative consequences for social cohesion.

Again, the extent of this being a problem is definitely debateable. But it's at the same time, imo, worth paying attention to.

So, if we accept the need for a stable and strong self is more sustainably and organically met through effortful cognitive engagement with social forces--such that the result is more skewed towards character in its general sense--rather than through quick easy fixes facilitated by the endless roles/characters that media try to sell us then the curent situation is at best well short of what we should be aiming for and at worst a self-fulfilling process that may have very negative consequences for social cohesion. — Baden

Everyone is a salesman Everyone wants us to embrace what they’re offering: religion , political ideology, their art, music, science, toilet paper products. We are bombarded on all sides by those whispering in our ear or shouting at us, taking us by the hand , bribing or threatening us , or even lying to us. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. The more the merrier. Human beings are very good at filtering, selecting and interpreting. We already do this at the most basic perceptual level. Every moment we are deluged with sensory stimulation of all kinds begging us to pay attention to them. Imagine how alienated and confused we would become if each stimulus that knocked at the door of consciousness was embraced as a new self-identity. We would be nothing but a series of random and conflicting selves.

But we are pattern-forming creatures, and this means that we either discard or dont even see most of what impinges on us from the sensory world. Only what can be assimilated to pre-existing pattens we have constructed exists for us. So everything that we do take notice of at either a conscious or pre-conscious level is assimilated to a self , enriching, strengthening and diversifying its bounds.

In order for our self-identity to evolve we need to encourage ever more sophisticated forms of social
influence from all quarters , including entreaties to buy, buy, buy from profit-making interests as their pitches evolve along with the rest of culture. I want them to try and convince , cajole , seduce, condition and manipulate me in every way they can think of. To the extent they are successful, it will be for the same reasons that a piece of music or philosophy convinces me to embrace it, because it is assimilated into a meaningful pattern for me and therefore enhances the health of my identity.

But we are pattern-forming creatures, and this means that we either discard or dont even see most of what impinges on us from the sensory world. Only what can be assimilated to pre-existing pattens we have constructed exists for us. So everything that we do take notice of at either a conscious or pre-conscious level is assimilated to a self , enriching, strengthening and diversifying its bounds. — Joshs

By way of clarification, is it your view (based on the literature) that when we embrace a philosophical position, say physicalism - we tend to embrace that which we are 'primed' already to accept on the grounds of pre-existing patterns we have built which are recognizable to us? Is it possible for people to accept completely new ideas - would such ideas even be comprehensible?

In order for our self-identity to evolve we need to encourage ever more sophisticated forms of social
influence from all quarters , including entreaties to buy, buy, buy from profit-making interests as their pitches evolve along with the rest of culture. — Joshs

Interesting - as a way of encountering the unfamiliar and to enlarge the possibilities?

I'm the reverse - I don't have a TV, have no social media, avoid the news, and only socialize if I have to. I shut out the world - and noise - wherever I can. :wink:

”We have insisted that the term role be reserved for a course of activity which is played out in the light of one’s construction of one or more other persons’ construct systems. When one plays a role, one behaves according to what one believes another person thinks, not merely according to what the other person appears to approve or disapprove. One plays a role when one views another person as a construer. This, of course, is a restricted definition of the term. It is the definition specifically used in the psychology of personal constructs. The term is used much more broadly elsewhere. The concept of individual suggestibility need not be considered, as it once was, the sole basis for a social psychology.

For Kelly, the difference between identity and role is that persona identity , the ‘self' , is the more or less stable sense of one’s own values, how one understands oneself in relation to and apart from all those who play a part in one’s life. Personality is hierarchically organized. At the subordinate end are peripheral constructs involved in interpreting everyday events. At the superordinate level of the self are core constructs concerning our central beliefs and values. — Joshs

There is a difference of nomenclature and of emphasis, but is there necessarily an unresolvable clash? Kelly seems to conceive of roles similarly to how I conceive of identities. I think this is reinforced by a comment about him here:

“some of Kelly's inspiration for the theory of personal constructs came from a close friend of his. Namely, this friend had been an actor in some drama in college, and for two or three weeks he really got into his character and lived it as it was the real him. Kelly, unlike many people who would see this only as a sheer affectation, thought this was the expression of his real self and the behavior was authentic”

This seems a good example of effortful cognitive engagement with an identity/role in a healthy way, in this case in the service of art.

And as @PhilosophyRunner pointed out, the description of the process of identity formation you put forward is apt for healthy interactions with society, but both PhilosophyRunner and I see these interactions as becoming increasingly unhealthy particularly as they are mediated through technologies that were not available for Kelly to analyse. Still, even in the absence of those technologies, his description of how social interaction may fail the individual sounds similar to how I would characterise some of the effects of the commodification of identity through e.g. social media.

Also, from the wiki page:

"The fragmentation corollary: "a person may successively employ a variety of construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with each other."

“Disordered constructs are those in which the system of construction is not useful in predicting social events and fails to change to accommodate new information. In many ways, Kelly's theory of psychopathology (or mental disorders) is similar to the elements that define a poor theory. A disordered construct system does not accurately predict events or accommodate new data.”

This potenitally equates to me as an eroded self or a self in which the gap between the core and the peripheral has become too large and has destabilized the whole due to inner self conflicts/incompatible identities or roles.

“Core constructs are those which govern a person’s maintenance processes—that is, those by which he maintains his identity and existence. In general, a healthy person’s mental processes follow core structures which are comprehensive but not too permeable. Since they are comprehensive, a person can use them to see a wide variety of known events as consistent with his own personality.” — Joshs

Core constructs that are "comprehensible but not too permeable" are the mark of the healthy self analagous to the developed character I earlier discussed. When they become incomprehensible or too permeable, there’s a problem.

Emotional turmoil consists of those events ( guilt, anxiety, threat) which throw our core sense of identity into crisis. Not knowing who we are anymore, not knowing what we stand for, is a situation of profound psychologicalcrisis and dysfunction. We can play an indefinite number of roles with other people without destabilizing our core identity. On the contrary, that stable identity ( which is not a static thing or even a narrative but the ability to assimilate a wide range of events in a way that maintains our self-integrity) is what allows us to play so many roles.

Occasionally we have to undergo a major revision of our core identity, which is potentially profoundly traumatic. — Joshs

It’s probably true that we can theoretically play an indefinite number of roles without destabilizing our identity but what’s important practically in my conception is that these roles are compatible with our core selves and are developed more or less organically rather than arbitrarily and invasively, the latter which I've hypothesized can lead to the psychologically dysfunctional situation described above.

So, Kelly approaches the issue through a focus on autonomous individuals and their individual interpetative apparatus rather than on social units dominated by social forces. To me (unless I'm missing some further context that would indicate otherwise), you can look at things from either angle and still come out with similar results.

In order for our self-identity to evolve we need to encourage ever more sophisticated forms of social
influence from all quarters , including entreaties to buy, buy, buy from profit-making interests as their pitches evolve along with the rest of culture. I want them to try and convince , cajole , seduce, condition and manipulate me in every way they can think of. To the extent they are successful, it will be for the same reasons that a piece of music or philosophy convinces me to embrace it, because it is assimilated into a meaningful pattern for me and therefore enhances the health of my identity. — Joshs

Hmm, I'm not so sure about that. Are you in marketing and advertising yourself by any chance? :lol:

But we are pattern-forming creatures, and this means that we either discard or dont even see most of what impinges on us from the sensory world. Only what can be assimilated to pre-existing pattens we have constructed exists for us. So everything that we do take notice of at either a conscious or pre-conscious level is assimilated to a self , enriching, strengthening and diversifying its bounds. — Joshs

:up: In general, a consumer society is not an Orwellian nightmare. But social media can make it so.

TPF excepted, of course. :smile:

I'm the reverse - I don't have a TV, have no social media, avoid the news, and only socialize if I have to. I shut out the world - and noise - wherever I can. :wink: — Tom Storm

. Actually, I’m pretty similar. I have a tv but only use it to watch old
movies, and completely avoid social media and news except for top headlines. But that’s consistentn with what I was saying. I welcome attempts by the world to knock on my door and offer me their wares, and I selectively pick and choose what works within my life and what doesn’t.

:up:

Hmm, I'm not so sure about that. Are you in marketing and advertising yourself by any chance? :lol: — Baden

Absolutely. I am marketing, packaging and advertising my brand of philosophy to you. Will it get under your skin or will it be deemed inconsistent with the identity of your sense-making system?

So, while under my conception, we don't reach all the way through the context of the social to a truly metaphysical level of self, the general contextualisation of the self in the face of the social as a self facing both threats and opportunities re its healthy realization, and much of the practical consequences of this situation, remain the same. What would form a true contrast here could be e.g. postmodern notions of identity play whereby the self is flattened out into some kind of dopamine machine around which the pinball of discourse races and the game is to get as many little lights of experience to flash up before the ball drops back into its hole of underlying meaningless. And then do it all again and accept that as all there is. — Baden

But we do have a metaphysical conception of self. And I disagree with Allan. The reason why you recognize this discordance within the social context is because you believe in a metaphysical self, too. But somehow, to some, it has become fashionable to discredit this argument.
( :wink: Lol. A true blue Cartesian here).

But we do have a metaphysical conception of self. And I disagree with Allan. The reason why you recognize this discordance within the social context is because you believe in a metaphysical self, too. — Caldwell

:up:

Actually, I’m pretty similar. I have a tv but only use it to watch old
movies, and completely avoid social media and news except for top headlines. But that’s consistentn with what I was saying. I welcome attempts by the world to knock on my door and offer me their wares, and I selectively pick and choose what works within my life and what doesn’t. — Joshs

Absolutely. I am marketing, packaging and advertising my brand of philosophy to you. Will it get under your skin or will it be deemed inconsistent with the identity of your sense-making system? — Joshs

Not at all. Judge them by what they do, not what they say! It seems your behaviour towards the types of media I've criticized is almost exaxtly the same as my own. You largely reject it and don't engage with it. So, you have a well developed enough personal immune system not to be taken in by aspects of media that may be damaging or undesirable. If this were the case with everyone, such media would no longer exist and a large part of the problem I identified would be solved! :party:

We certainly differ in terms of theoretical stance and attitude; yours is more ironical and playful than mine. E.g. you frame even philosophical debate in our current context in consumerist terms, which makes a kind of a Frankfurt School type point re cultural degradation: debate reduced to marketing, art reduced to entertainment etc. not because of any inherent deficit but due to the context in which it occurs. But I don't really know where to locate you there.

Anyhow, I like Kelly and intend to read more of him. I'm also reading a book called "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam, which examines, using the concept of social capital, patterns of community breakdown in the U.S. up until the period I'm focusing on. I might try to work some of that in here too as it seems relevant.

Though I will strenuously deny cartesianism if ever accused of it, I will gladly join forces with the cartesians in common ideological combat against social forces that I consider destructive. (This type of thing happens in comic books a lot and they always win, so it's gotta work). :wink:

Do you think people are becoming deeper, more thoughtful and more in touch with themselves? Do you think modern societies are progressing away from frivolousness, stupidity, and superficiality towards character, intelligence and creativity? Do you think there is less and less evidence of mental conflict evidenced through reduced levels of mental illness, unhappiness, anxiety and drug use? — Baden

I think there are now new standards for what it means to be "deep, thoughtful, in touch with oneself". It's not that old-fashioned European ideal anymore.

Let's not forget that the self-help movement has made self-improvement into another commodity, yet another thing to consume. And the ease and flexibility with which matters of self and identity are approached in the self-help movement suggest that old ways of thinking about them just don't apply anymore. At least not in discourse with the proponents of self-improvement.

Do you think there is less and less evidence of mental conflict evidenced through reduced levels of mental illness, unhappiness, anxiety and drug use? — Baden

It seems the modern way is to externalize conflict (blaming others, demonizing others), the normalization of hatred and contempt, drug use is for the purpose of pleasure and peak experiences and not as self-medication. There is a strong sense of "everyone is solely responsible for themselves". In short, narcissism and sociopathy are becoming normalized. And with this as the new normal every other standard needs to be recalibrated.

So, you have a well developed enough personal immune system not to be taken in by aspects of media that may be damaging or undesirable. If this were the case with everyone, such media would no longer exist and a large part of the problem I identified would be solved! :party: — Baden

According to current models of immunity, our body remembers and then detects and attacks specific contentful markers belonging to foreign particles. The features of invaders it recognizes are assumed to be independent of the nature of the immune system itself. The system mirrors or represents to itself what it looks for as harmful or benign in its environment. The harm or neutrality is in the foreign content that the system internally represents. Harmful entities have different characteristics in themselves than benign ones.

For Kelly, the harm is not in the stimulus , but in the relation between the stimulus and the interpretive structure of the construer. Specifically, one doesn’t first recognize a stimulus and then determine it as harmful or benign. Something is only experienced as harmful to the cognitive system to the extent that it is not coherently and intelligibly recognizable. Harmful stimulation can never evade detection. Such a stimulus would simply go unnoticed and have no effect on our thinking or feeling. Something is only felt as harmful to the extent that our attempts to integrate it fails , and it is experienced as confused , chaotic, unpredictable. Harm from a cognitive perspective is a breakdown in effective construing, not a characteristic of a stimulus in itself.

I should add that Kelly’s constructivist approach runs into a lot of opposition , not just from critical theory but postmodern, post structuralist theory. Not too many today are willing to deny that we can be swayed in one direction or another through influences we are not conscious of. An interesting g difference between poststructuralists and Frankfurt school types is that the former don’t believe that power is invested in individuals or groups but circulates among us. The stability of social formations and epistemes works reciprocally with the stability of self-identity, each determining, reinforcing and altering the other. Subjects and identities are temporary nodes or intersections of the circulation of power within the wider community.

Not too many today are willing to deny that we can be swayed in one direction or another through influences we are not conscious of. — Joshs

I don't see anything in Kelly's theory to suggest this type of influence doesn't obtain at least to some degree (and I don't think any major theorist post WWII suggests this). I understand Kelly as proposing that personal construct systems are formed over time in a manner whereby the integration of new constructs is expected to occur proportionately to their compatibility with the modalities inherent in the system already developed. But this is not fully determinative of their directionality. What determines their directionality is circumscribed by available stimuli. We can easily imagine starting points for construct systems that become self-propelling according to dominant discourses which present themselves as validatory tools. And the fact that the self is negotiated with the social in different ways according to its particular make-up does not preclude it being swayed by social influences in a way it's not conscious of, not least because our interpetative mechanisms naturally confabulate reasons for our behaviour compatible with self-understandings that are by their nature subjective methods of social coping rather than objective truths.

So, conceptualising individuals as naive scientists or more malleable social units does not prescribe results but processes, processes which are dependent on social contexts for their functioning. Social heterogeneity is crucial here and not just in the superficial sense of the proliferation of ideological goods for sale but also in the diversity of available ideological standpoints concerning both individual self-relations and social-self relations. A self that contextualizes itself according to dominant discourses of self and social relations tends to set for itself a direction that reinforces such discourses regardless of whether the process is self-negotiated because the construct system gradually fulfils the logic of the context in which it is constructed.

In short, relations that are inimical to the development of character, which is not the same thing as identity because it suggests a particular mode of instantiation of identity that is strong and stable. Character is what happens when identities work together in a coherent and sustainable way within selves. Character, if anything, allows for the resistance to identity structures that offer temporary physiological validation. It doesn’t have to be good or bad in itself but it is at least a way for us to immunise ourselves against social processes that themselves seek to immunise themselves from the types of social change only characters are strong enough to bring about. — Baden

Central to your theory then is the primacy of "character," which isn't fully defined, but the term means in the vernacular someone who adheres to certain moral standards regardless of external influences, exhibiting a certain integrity to principle. Maybe the Platonic virtues of wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance satisfy your definition.

It should come as no surprise that your position (here on a philosophy forum) is philosophical-centric, even positing the users here as separated from the vacuous masses. The concept of separateness from the mundane is a workable secular definition of the sacred. That is, you are pointing to a higher purpose, which you do describe as a development of the self, which equates to a declaration that a certain tragedy exists in someone not living to their full potential. You point out that the tragedy is typically measurable in terms of the lack of happiness and fulfillment such a person will experience, but I'd go further and suggest the tragedy would exist regardless of whether we could show a measurable negative byproduct of a person not living up to the potential of his creation, but that has to do with my perhaps idiosyncratic and extreme views regarding the sanctity of humans.

Regardless of how I might be projecting well beyond what you meant to convey, I do think we share the same concerns when we look at the Kardashians as too many people's role models, where they believe that standard is perfectly fine and that some sort of fulfillment or happiness can be found emulating that. And so you might ask why some migrate to that modeling and others don't. Is it just a matter of genetics or family upbringing, or, as is often the case, was it formed in struggle? There is a noticeable correlation between those who have suffered and immunity from pettiness, likely arising from a revelation of a secret knowledge of what is truly important and meaningful.

Where we place the credit for those immune isn't clear, but you do place the blame for those afflicted directly on society's shoulders. It is certainly something that is arising from society, but society is reducible to its members, so that question is who are these corrupting entities? It is likely such corrupting entities have always existed, but I suppose your theory is that they were always sufficiently suppressed and controlled, but with the advent of social media, they have risen to power and overwhelmed traditional value systems such that it has run amuck.

Before I read anything you wrote, I threw out an accusation of your harkening back to the good old days, which isn't entirely inaccurate, but what do you offer as a solution? If we buy into the ultimate power of Darwinism, then you would expect those who are buying in to an inferior path to eventually be relegated to the dust bin. That is, if you are correct that you've identified a devolution in societies, then the theory of evolution would demand those losers drop from the radar. The other possibility is that you're not seeing a devolution, but just a distressing evolution, meaning the adherents of Karsahianism will ultimately prevail. I don't think that, which is why I remain optimistic in terms of what you've identified. I cannot believe that the path of accepting societal influence without resistance is the path to success or describes how the future will look.

It should come as no surprise that your position (here on a philosophy forum) is philosophical-centric, even positing the users here as separated from the vacuous masses. — Hanover

Sure, and that may be characterized as an elitist attitude, but as long as we maintain any notion of objective values (as you clearly do) such that we consider, e.g. intelligence to be better than stupidity, knowledge better than ignorance, reflection better than mere reaction, and think in terms of potentiality, we can conceive of the danger of a dominant discourse that seeks to monopolize social capital such that stupidity, ignorance and superficiality have real social rewards (both from a short term physiological perspective and through loger term networking of relationships etc) where these social rewards are themselves directed by the profit motive of a technologized social universe for which our potentialities and the values they represent are irrelevant except insofar as they are monetarily exploitable.

The consequences of this attempted monopolization of culture by its lowest common denominator may range from the relatively harmless, e.g. social capital gained from knowing what the Kardashians are wearing this month, to the clearly harmful, e.g. social capital gained from Tik Tok challenges that get people killed. The salient point though is that, from the point of view of social discourses or ideologies, we are only means to ends, i.e. the reproduction of such contexts, rather than ends in ourselves. Insofar, then, as we perceive ourselves as the latter, it makes sense to render explicit the functioning of these forces and critically analyse our relationship to them, not only in the simple guise of Kelly's naive scientists who react bidirectionally on the basis of already internalized dispositions which are inevitably themselves a result of a process of cultural negotiation (but which process, as I've contended above, is not necessarily conscious or self-directed), but also as culturally educated "self-builders" whose orientation to social capital is mediated by an awareness that the accrual of such is not an ideologically neutral enterprise but one suffused in social forces for which self-obscurity may be an interest.

but what do you offer as a solution? — Hanover

Education, particularly early education. The practicalities of that are difficult. An education that undermines the society it functions in, even if only to improve it, is an almost paradoxical notion.

Edit: Contemporary early education is obsessed with validating students' immersion in dominant discourses and their personal psychologies as circumscribed by these under the guise of sensitivity, understanding, and kindness. But while the "It's fine to be this..." "It's fine to be that..." liberal philosophy of education may build a certain social confidence, it's a confidence that's not directed to true diversity as I see it. True diversity can only be achieved by an encouragement to look for things that are not fine, but that are still presented as such, i.e. in a critical engagement with the social that fosters a desire to change it rather than fit in or be seen to be fitting in to it.

@Caldwell

Just a quick note because your point re metaphysics remains interesting, especially in light of some recent reading I've been doing: To some degree my attitude towards metaphysics is a symptom of the issue I’m describing which subsists in an ever widening gap between science and art from which we draw our contemporary form of reason and that places these orientations towards truth on opposite poles of an irrational world from which each necessarily denigrates the other by virtue of this placement, with philosophy mediating uneasily from the inner latitudes. In another sense, a certain distance towards metaphysics in so far as it is contemporaneously understood is facilitative of attempts towards bridging such a gap. But either way, there's no denying the transcendent resonances of what I'm arguing.

So, conceptualising individuals as naive scientists or more malleable social units does not prescribe results but processes, processes which are dependent on social contexts for their functioning. — Baden

If you substitute 'psychologists' for 'naive scientists' it becomes apparent that personal construct theory is a meta-theory of psychology. It concerns itself with the terms and dimensions by which the individual understands themself and other people.

The usual tool is called a repertory grid. Imagine a grid of squares; down the side is a list of people you know fairly well: yourself, your ideal self, your partner, your fantasy partner, your child, your ideal child, mother, father, boss, work-mate, uncle, granny, mother-in-law, first lover, best friend, worst enemy, whoever, the more the merrier. So each person has a row in the grid And along the top each column has some feature of personality that has some importance to you. niceness, sociability, religiousness, selfishness, intelligence, honesty, virtue, dominance, aggression, sensitivity, sanity, fidelity, whatever you can think of. And then you fill in for each person a score for each attribute - 0 to 10 maybe.

Then, these scores are subjected to an incredibly tortuous statistical analysis that I did a few times by hand with a mere calculator to help, and have completely forgotten, and you arrive at some interesting information about the number of dimensions that you analyse people under, how extreme your self image is (by your own standards), how close you are to your ideal self, and so on. If you want to try it, https://openrepgrid.org will save you hours of calculations.

Anyway, the takeaway from all this is that one's identity, being represented by the score one gives oneself in relation to significant others, is one aspect of the way one identifies humanity psychologically. The personal construct is the way one constructs both oneself as a person and the other as a person. There is no question here of there being a truth of the matter, as in a right way to understand people, but rather the depth or shallowness of the ways we understand ourselves and each other is itself a significant aspect of such understanding. This is psychology as a way of social being in the world. Is your world full of goodies and baddies like a cowboy film? That's interesting!

Yes, I read this today, which gets as far as the repertory grid concept and then substanitally ends as a useful resource, being followed by a bunch of references and indices.

f you want to try it, https://openrepgrid.org will save you hours of calculations. — unenlightened

Dare I? Probably, yes.

Let's not forget that the self-help movement has made self-improvement into another commodity, yet another thing to consume. And the ease and flexibility with which matters of self and identity are approached in the self-help movement suggest that old ways of thinking about them just don't apply anymore. At least not in discourse with the proponents of self-improvement. — baker

I think you highlight here how the process of commodification neutralises the effectiveness of self-development by appropriating it under its rubric, fostering an instrumental attitude towards it that tends to undermine its proper logic, almost as if partaking in the commercial aspect of the process (buying a book, paying for a course) is the solution and partaking in whatever therapy offered just more work to get through to get our money's worth.

Not too many today are willing to deny that we can be swayed in one direction or another through influences we are not conscious of.
— Joshs

I don't see anything in Kelly's theory to suggest this type of influence doesn't obtain at least to some degree (and I don't think any major theorist post WWII suggests this). …the fact that the self is negotiated with the social in different ways according to its particular make-up does not preclude it being swayed by social influences in a way it's not conscious of, not least because our interpetative mechanisms naturally confabulate reasons for our behaviour compatible with self-understandings that are by their nature subjective methods of social coping rather than objective truths. — Baden

Kelly understands the notion of the unconscious in terms of levels of awareness, or the distinction between implicit
and explicit consciousness , rather than in terms of
an unconscious that is completely unavailable to awareness.

“We do not use the conscious-unconscious dichotomy, but we do recognize that some of the personal constructs a person seeks to subsume within his system prove to be fleeting or elusive. Sometimes this is because they are loose rather than tight, as in the first phase of the creative cycle. Sometimes it is because they are not bound by the symbolisms of words or other acts. But of this we are sure, if they are important in a person's life it is a mistake to say they are unconscious or that he is unaware of them. Every day he experiences them, often all too poignantly, except he cannot put his finger on them nor tell for sure whether they are at the spot the therapist has probed for them.”

Kelly explains that repression is not a useful construct in personal construct theory

“ Our theoretical position would not lead us to place so much emphasis upon what is presumably ‘repressed'. Our concern is more with the constructs which are being used by the client to structure his world. If certain elements have dropped out of his memory it may be simply that he has ceased to use the structures which imbued these elements with sense. We do not see these abandoned elements as covertly operating stimuli in the client's life.”

I understand Kelly as proposing that personal construct systems are formed over time in a manner whereby the integration of new constructs is expected to occur proportionately to their compatibility with the modalities inherent in the system already developed. But this is not fully determinative of their directionality. What determines their directionality is circumscribed by available stimuli. We can easily imagine starting points for construct systems that become self-propelling according to dominant discourses which present themselves as validatory tools.

A self that contextualizes itself according to dominant discourses of self and social relations tends to set for itself a direction that reinforces such discourses regardless of whether the process is self-negotiated because the construct system gradually fulfils the logic of the context in which it is constructed. — Baden

You’re assuming that there is a content inherent in discourse which has the power to dominate. This further presumes that we can separate this discursive content from the personal construct system which is embracing it, as though 10 people with 10 different construct systems are influenced by the same discursive meaning which imposes itself on all of them and propels them in its direction.

But for Kelly we all live in different worlds. It is not the same dominant discourse which 10 people embrace but 10 different interpretations. It is not the discourse which propels the direction of the construct system but the construct system which propels the direction of interpretation of the discourse Put differently , intrinsic qualitative content of meaning plays a very minor role in Kelly’s approach. The specific content of a discourse serves a barely more than a placemarker. internal valuative content beyond what is necessary to distinguish it from other meanings. Everything that we associate with affectively and cognitively relevant and significant meaning is dependent on process, on how intimately, multidimensionally and assimilatively we embrace new experience, and very little of it on content.

In my dealings with other persons, I would be able to discern a thread of continuity organizing their participation in dialogue with me, dictating the manner and extent to which I can be said to influence their thinking and they mine. My thinking can not properly be seen as `determined' by his response, and his ideas are not simply `shaped' by my contribution to our correspondence. The extent to which I could be said to be embedded within a particular set of cultural practices would be a function of how closely other persons I encounter resonate with my own ongoing experiential process. I can only shape my action to fit socially legitimate goals or permitted institutionalized forms to the extent that those goals or forms are already implicated in my ongoing experiential movement. Even then, what is implicated for me is not `the' social forms, but aspects hidden within these so-called forms which are unique to the organizational structure of my construct system; what I perceive as socially `permitted' rhetorical argumentation is already stylistically distinctive in relation to what other participants perceive as permitted. Each individual who feels belonging to an extent in a larger ethico-political collectivity perceives that collectivity's functions in a unique, but peculiarly coherent way relative to their own history, even when they believe that in moving forward in life their behavior is guided by the constraints imposed by essentially the `same' discursive conventions as the others in their community.

In Kelly’s 1200 page Psychology of Personal Constructs, there is not a single note of concern for the supposed biasing and dominating influence of social
discursive structures on individual behavior. In the contrary, the book can be read as a critique of such thinking. Again. and again, Kelly attacks push and pull psychologies as being beholden to inner and outer demons. “...to allow ourselves to become preoccupied with independent forces, socio-dynamics, psychodynamics, leprechaun theory, demonology, or stimulus-response mechanics, is to lose sight of the essential feature of the whole human enterprise.”
His opposite to such thinking is reflected in a central element of his psychotherapeutic approach, his concept of hostility. For Kelly, hostility ( anger, resentment, etc) is our tendency to blame the content of events for our inability to make sense of them. So he views models which assume a construct system whose direction can be reinforced by external influences as forms of blame. We blame the ‘harmful, dominating influence’ of the discourse on people rather than construing how each person is interpreting the meaning of the discourse in their own way, relative to their own aims.

personal construct theory is a meta-theory of psychology. It concerns itself with the terms and dimensions by which the individual understands themself and other people.

The usual tool is called a repertory grid. Imagine a grid of squares; down the side is a list of people y — unenlightened

I’d be careful in relying too much on the rep grid in trying to understand the main thrust of Kelly’s work. Here’s what Kelly had to say to an interviewer.

“In 1966 I asked him how he would have changed those two volumes, now that he had the perspective of over a decade later. After indicating that he probably would delete the section on the rep-grid, because it seemed to him that methodologically-oriented researchers had let it obscure the contribution of the theory, he added wistfully

"At the time I was already concerned that it might be too far from the mainstream to be recognized as psychology, but now-yes-I think I would have written it more honestly."

We do live in different individual worlds. Yet we tend to be very similar to each other within our respective discursive worlds (intraculturally), considering the potential for intercultural variation. We both know this is not coincidence. Try behaving like an 18th century Comanche Indian in modern day America and you won't last long. So, you emphasize above individual differences that I don't necessarily deny. I emphasize a power of discourse that is obvious the moment we separate ourselves conceptually from our own culture. And I also point to a life-long process of cultural sedimentation that delimits the terms under which we interact and understand each other. This allows for an enormous amount of variation in how we relate to each other and to the social in general, but it also allows for social trends and mechanisms that may be positive or negative viewed from the perspective of how they utilize human resources.

You are in the majority here in terms of your thinking. I only know of three writers other than Kelly who deconstruct concepts of cultural sedimentation to reveal a more intricate process of meaning-making( Derrida, Heidegger and Eugene Gendlin).

Here’s a bit more about Gendlin, whose work shares much with Heidegger, from a paper of mine.

While Gendlin agrees that the experiencing body is inherently an environmental, and thus social interaction, he construes the nature of this intersubjectivity differently. The reciprocally causal temporality underpinning the embodied approaches mentioned in this paper leads necessarily to the idea of intersubjectivity as an interdependent cobbling and co-ordination between personal history and cultural signs in which the ‘joints' of such interactive bodily and social practices are simultaneously within my own subjectivity and common to other participants in my community. Socialization is seen as a direct introjection or conditioning from the cultural environment, leaving personal experience with only a weak pragmatic self-consistency .

This is what Gallagher calls primary intersubjectivity, after Merleau-Ponty's notion of intercorporeality.

By contrast , Gendlin's occurring into implying grounding of temporality produces an implicatory rather than a reciprocally causal account of relation between body and world. This imbues bodily sense making with a pragmatic integrity, intricacy and self-intimacy missing from other accounts of intersubjectivity.

“There is a big difference between my view and that of the current philosophers. They say that the body as sensed from inside is meaningful and interactional only through language (which includes concepts, culture, and history). If we find a bodily sense meaningful, they think this can only be what language and culture have trained into our bodies.” (Gendlin 2009c)

Gendlin's re-envisioning of the body as radical interaffecting, like Heidegger's Being-with, locates the genesis of meaning-making in a more fundamental process than that of socially distributed joint activity.

“Our bodily sense of situations is a concretely sensed interaction process that always exceeds culture, history, and language.” “ It is not the body of perception that is structured by language. Nor is the body's interaction structured by culture and language alone. Rather, it is the body of interactional living in its environment. The body's interaction is always more intricate than language. It is after and with language, always again freshly ongoing and constellating this situation in the present.”

“To think that we are the creation of culture is not a view one can maintain if one senses ongoing bodily experiencing directly. The intricacy you are now living vastly exceeds what cultural forms have contributed to you. With focusing we discover that we are much more organized from the inside out.”

“In living, our bodies generate, imply, and enact language and culture; but with and after those, our bodies imply (project, experience, sense, practice, demand . . .) more. What they imply is inherently interactional and social, but it is more precise and implies what has never as yet formed and happened.”

Do you think societal health is increasing or not? Why or why not? — Baden

Probably impossible to measure but I can only go by my own view which is, of course, subjective and situational. But I think it is better than it was when I was young. I meet a lot of young people through my work and my daughter, who is 25. They appear happier, nicer and more socially engaged than the people I knew when I was that age and even the young of, say, 20 years ago. I see much more meaningful involvement in politics and social change. Less substance abuse. So many more creative ways for self-expression. A banal monolithic mainstream culture no longer rests heavily upon their shoulders - there's a multiplicity of cultural choices and opportunities. I prefer the present era to the 1970's or 1980's. I think it's much easier to go your own way and explore options that even 15 years ago were unavailable.

Of course I can't ignore people from the margins of society, or in countries where opportunities are denied them for a range of economic and religiopolitical reasons. That said, I had lunch with an Aboriginal Australian community worker yesterday and his take was that the present era for his mob is demonstrably healthier and happier now than it was in 1970, when his parents were young. Doesn't mean that there aren't still tragedies on a daily basis, but the clouds are lifting.

I’d be careful in relying too much on the rep grid in trying to understand the main thrust of Kelly’s work. Here’s what Kelly had to say to an interviewer. — Joshs

Yes indeed. the statistical complexity lends a comforting air of scientism to what is a fundamentally philosophical, social-democratic, and conceptual approach. Nevertheless, I think the grid is an interesting way of self- exploration, and that exploration gives a more visceral insight into the concepts of personal construct theory. It's interesting to hear that quote though. Back in the day, people like R.D.Laing were definitely not on the syllabus, whereas Kelly was, in a slightly isolated from everything else way. He definitely got credibility from being really advanced in the statistical analysis,* without which he would almost certainly been banned for heresy.

*Those were the days when computers took up a whole building and there was one in the university and mere undergraduates were not allowed in.

You are in the majority here in terms of your thinking. I only know of three writers other than Kelly who deconstruct concepts of cultural sedimentation to reveal a more intricate process of meaning-making( Derrida, Heidegger and Eugene Gendlin). — Joshs

Oops, suddenly I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the argument. Here I am defending the status quo while you oppose it. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. :lol:

Anyhow, I could go as far as conceiving the body as a route to intercultural commonalities of experience in the realm of nature and art, for example. But all experiences are ultimately conceptualised and interpreted socio-linguistically (which seems to be acknowledged in your post). Maybe this is only to point to the fragility of the mystical but not to deny it. I wonder though what the practical consequences of such a view are? Where can we locate its traces in our contemporary context? It seems very Zen, but of course my idea of Zen is polluted by self-help industry conceptions I’ve criticized above, so what would I know?

Yes indeed. the statistical complexity lends a comforting air of scientism to what is a fundamentally philosophical, social-democratic, and conceptual approach. — unenlightened

Or is it??? Here's an amusing anecdote from Kelly complaining about various interpretations of his theory (from the same source I quoted above):

“I have been so puzzled over the early labeling of personal construct theory as “cognitive” that sev- eral years ago I set out to write another short book to make it clear that I wanted no part of cogni- tive theory. The manuscript was about a third completed when I gave a lecture at Harvard Univer- sity with the title, “Personal Construct Theory as a Line of Inference.” Following the lecture, Pro- fessor Gordon Allport explained to the students that my theory was not a “cognitive” theory but an “emotional” theory. Later the same afternoon, Dr. Henry Murray called me aside and said, “You know, don't you, that you are really an existentialist.” Since that time I stepped into almost all the open manholes that psychological theorists can possibly fall into. For example, in Warsaw, where I thought my lecture on personal construct theory would be an open challenge to dialectical materialism, the Poles, who had been conducting some seminars on personal construct theory be- fore my arrival, explained to me that “personal construct theory was just exactly what dialectical materialism stood for.” Along the way also I have found myself classified in a volume on personal- ity theories as one of the “learning theorists,” a classification that seems to me so patently ridicu- lous that I have gotten no end of amusement out of it.
A few years ago an orthodox psychoanalyst insisted, after hearing me talk about psychotherapy, that, regardless of what I might say about Freud, and regardless even of my failure to fall in the apostolic succession to which a personal psychoanalysis entitled one, I was really “a psychoana- lyst.” This charge was repeated by a couple of psychoanalytically sophisticated psychiatrists in Lon- don last fall, and nothing I could say would shake their conviction. I have, of course, been called a Zen Buddhist, and last fall one of our former students, now a distinguished psychologist, who was invited back to give a lecture, spent an hour and a half in a seminar corrupting my students with the idea that I was really a “behaviorist.”

Note here how it’s commonalities of discourses that defined the orientation under which the theory was interpreted and integrated into personal contructs. The directionality of travel had already been established by the prevailing (sub)cultural context in a way the various groups of intellectuals were clearly not aware of; otherwise, they would have had the means to challenge their assumptions!

Social 1: Individual 0