Since the blog tackles forms of passages this week, I thought the article below might be of interest.

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/03/mental-illness-the-identity-thief.html

Written by a bright, but young and very earnest philosopher, it tries to provide answers to the question of identity during and after severe illness. Clearly you are not the same body after amputation or other impactful physical losses. Are you also not the same mind during and after bouts of serious mental illness, be it depression, bipolar disease or other such ailments? Grace Boey approaches the question with a premise that there is an authentic self, that can be stolen, harmed, delayed, or prevented from development.

Even if I shared the assumption of the existence of a “real” self – which I don’t, given that I subscribe to Marx’ analysis of how the existing (and always changing) surround continually shapes our consciousness – her answers are muddled. I am only posting the article since it was an interesting thought exercise for me to figure out what to make of the question. As someone who has both seen physical and psychological change writ large in her life, I have never felt that irretrievable and missing parts affected a sense of who I am. Change happens, whether through illness or other factors, and you just add the experience to the self-portrait, like slapping on another layer of paint, or varnishing it, even if those new layers usurp others. The question of lack of control over personality traits vanishing or being subdued is one shared by all humanity, healthy and ill alike, so why waste worry on it? Just as we no longer speak of schizophrenics, but instead of people suffering from schizophrenia, to make clear that the disease is not the person, we should not equate traits with self. There is a whole emerging literature on the self in both cognitive and social psychology that provides some insights (for the curious: check out Hazel Marcus’ research, who teaches at Stanford.) I will write about it in a future post.

So I figure we’re just passing through different states and stages, all of our lives, and they will shape us and enrich us if we don’t cling to the “what was” or the “could have beens.” Most of us have the choice to look at the bright side. I don’t mean this in a flippant way, I know the toll that depression can take; but I truly believe we are just better off if we accept change as a constant, and self as a growing entity.