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Identity

Decent Essays

Ryan Pomeroy
Phil 101
Billy Goehrig
Identity
No two people have the same identity. Every person has a separate set of experiences. People mold and shape to what goes on around them and react to these events. Building your personality is something you will do for your whole life and is a constant occupation. There are many origins of an identity, My Life as a Dog, “Five Kinds of Self-knowledge” by Ulric Neisser, and “Love and Need” by Thomas Merton look deeper into identity to see what creates and effects it. These pieces of literature all support the idea that one's environment and self choice influence who you are. Many things go into the development of a person’s identity, but nothing is more important than the experiences that come from …show more content…

It is an outline of five things we do that make us who we are. I will break down three of the five aspects of Neisser’s selfs. The second self represented in his theory is the interpersonal self, this touches on human interactions between two or more people. Next he jumps to the private self, this explains that no two people are going to have the exact same thoughts and feelings on all subjects or know everything the others don’t. You are the only one who knows your true identity because you are the only person that has experienced everything you have been through. This allows for a person to create their own identity that is completely different from everyone elses. Finally we can break down the conceptual self, this is the role that we play in everyday life to other people (ex. doctor, famous). The conceptual self or the interpersonal self can make a person alter their actions by being impacted by the opinions of other people. This can cause a drastic change in identity. These two concepts go together because My Life as a Dog says that all experiences change you in some way and Neisser’s theory on selfs breaks down each type of experience a human can have, so both works agree with the fact that everything can change you. These two works of literature go in depth and play off of each other on the fact that all experiences a human faces can affect and create what a human is

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