The notion of self is something we frequently take for granted. As you read those words, it’s likely you may have redirected your focus reflexively—i.e., interrupted your thinking about some detail of your life or some abstract issue or concern and turned inward. You suddenly became, not only the source of awareness, but the object. We all experience varying degrees of comfort or discomfort at such moments. Unless we are psychotic, we hopefully have some meaningful grasp of who we are. But what do we really know about the fundamental nature of the self?
In our daily lives, we tend to experience ourselves as pure process. We awake in the morning and begin a series of goal-directed behaviors that require various levels of thought and effort, from getting dressed to driving somewhere to investing energy in solving some particular challenge or problem to exercising or talking to friends or colleagues. The myriad activities requiring our attention are constantly distracting us from our inner world, which we often neglect until it grabs our attention again through some powerful emotion or physical distress or maybe just a glance in the restroom mirror.
Then we confront that person we are once again—that private being which only we can know directly. That unique identity that is you which came into existence when you were born and stays with you every moment of every waking hour of your life—and will go out of existence on the day you die. The phenomenon of our unique inner experience has always fascinated me. We can call it our mind or our consciousness or our personality, but somehow it seems like more than that. We do not tend to see ourselves as simply a consciousness moving through the world. You alone are you—and that quality of selfhood is like a center of being totally unlike any other experience you could ever have. It is like a light from within, a flame that flares and rekindles but never goes out completely. The fact that I have to resort to metaphor underscores how little science presently knows about what the so-called “self” really is.
In the current issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (Volume 9, Number 1), therapist Andrew Schwartz explores the nature of that inner light. His stimulating article is titled, ‘Self-as-Organism and Sense of Self.”
“Given the power and persistence of the immortal soul notion in our culture,” he writes, “I would propose that the concept of self…tends to function for many people as a descendant of the more ancient concept of the immortal soul. The self from this outmoded vantage point is viewed…as a ‘ghost in the machine,’ so to speak, coherent as an entity in its own right and ontologically independent of bodily and environmental processes.”
Schwartz argues that this antiquated religious viewpoint prompts many people to make the mistake of confusing the self and the “sense of self” at any given time. The true self, he contends, is the total organism—“an organism that consists of a multi-faceted, multilayered aggregate of interrelated sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, agency, choices, behaviors, body structures and processes, experiences, memories, capacities, etc.”
In taking this viewpoint, Schwartz explicitly departs from Ayn Rand’s position that the self is identical to the mind. He sees this as contradictory to her ethical principle of rational self-interest. “In Rand’s framework,” he states, “it surely does not mean to live for one’s mind;…” It means, instead, to live for the whole organism—mind and body.
It is a fascinating thesis, although I have to take issue with his reference to Gilbert Ryle’s alleged “ghost in the machine.” By adopting this phrase, Schwartz opens himself to charges of reductionism. He then adds more fuel to that fire. While distinguishing self from mind, he advocates discarding the whole notion of any “immaterial, ontologically independent” aspect of our being. He comes dangerously close to throwing out the baby with the bath water, discounting the mind in the process of differentiating it. Human consciousness is, in fact, not only immaterial, but—at least to some unknown extent—ontologically independent. This does not qualify it as in any sense a “ghost.”
This conceptual error is most unfortunate, because his overall argument definitely has merit. He cites two consequences of the more restricted view of self. Not only does such splintering foster a tendency for people to disown the physical aspect of their being, but it may undermine their appreciation of the importance of intellectuality and spirituality as well. “To the extent that I think of myself as the organism that is me, I tend to more gracefully know myself as a mind-body totality…I am more …sensitive to my needs as an entire organism; and I can more gracefully learn to live with full-bodied integrity, instead of forgetting, not attending to, or rejecting certain aspects of my human nature…”
Schwartz has clearly been strongly influenced by the writings of Nathaniel Branden. He includes extensive discussion of Branden’s theories regarding the psychological impact of self-concept and the pitfalls of “pseudo-self-esteem.”
At the conclusion of his article, Schwartz gets a bit carried away with the importance of his thesis. He cites Rand’s philosophical error of identifying the self with the mind as the “bug in the system” responsible for an excessive tendency toward intellectualism and moralism among Objectivists. Instead of adhering to her shining vision of a philosophy for living on earth, “the followers of Rand’s philosophy are certainly not exclusively, but often enough, overly intellectualized and rationalistic, and with a penchant for moralism and arrogance.” He suggests that his clarification of an integrated view of the self may serve as a remedy.
It won’t. The causes for the psychological tendencies he correctly describes are significantly more complicated than a truncated view of the self. But Schwartz has taken an important step toward enhancing our appreciation of a highly neglected issue.
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