The nature of one’s identity is attributed by the environment that influences the experiences that the individual intakes. Self is the fundamental being that separates individuals due to the uniqueness of their minds and the experiences that influence the distinctiveness of identity. Martha Stout’s background in psychology initializes a deeper understanding of self through the analysis of stories told by her patients who suffer from dissociation in her writing called “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday”. Her examination of her patient’s stories helped broaden their understanding of their issues of self but not completely find the truth of their identity. Along with the identity of self, Stout’s patients were also challenged with …show more content…
Stout and Bell capitalize the importance of narration in their writings to play part in the identities of characters Jayanthi and Seth. Jayanthi, an Indian woman that manipulates her sexuality to disprove societal and cultural labels which is categorized by Bell as the Sexual Woman, takes narration into account when she recollects her history to her friends and family. The adrenaline and eccentricity of the stories give her purpose that is displayed through the context of her stories. She also uses narration to interpret her desire for relationship but struggles to find one. Bell explains after bad-girl Jayanthi tells her sexual experience and relational denials, “She was aware now that she had been feeling insecure at the time, and that she had been seeking out attention and affection… At the time she had longed for a sexual history, for stories that would make her real and alive”(33). Through her stories, Jayanthi realized her faults in her immense sexual experiences that cut her away from having a tangible relationship that would change her bad-girl identity. Knowing that she craves attention, she prefers the sexual lifestyle in order to have a purpose to relate to in her stories. On the other hand, Stout’s patient, Seth, utilizes narration to directly tell Stout the effect that dissociation causes him. Dissociation disrupts Seth’s identity as well as his
Even though our bodies are in one place, our minds may be in another. In Martha Stout’s essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday,” the author introduces us to the idea of dissociation. Dissociation is when one’s mind is away from the body and he or she does not know what is going on in the physical world. Those that have traumatic histories may experience this. But because of dissociation, victims may not know if they had a traumatic past because a memory of it never really formed. Stout also finds that individuals may use dissociation as a way to protect themselves from trauma. Sometimes the slightest and smallest piece of a traumatic memory may bring into play the dissociation. When these individuals experience dissociation
In the film, “Frankie and Alice,” the viewer is not only able to see the manifestation of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) but also its momentary yet lasting effects on the life of a person living with it. The film also serves as a catalyst for discussing the nature of disassociation, why there is such a need for debate on dissociative episodes, and how DID challenges the very existence of a “personal identity.” One’s personal identity can be defined as having continuity and making possible the unification of “earlier and later parts of subjectivity and, viewed from the outside, of persons and lives” (Radden 133).
No matter how much a person desires to live according to their personal autonomy, he or she will never escape the influence of societal forces. Explicitly or subtlety, these forces shape our individuality. One intriguing manner that these societal forces manifests itself in is our name. As Ruth Graham writes, “It’s becoming increasingly clear today that names carry a wealth of information about the world around us, the family we arrived in, the moment we were born—and that they mark us as part of cultural currents bigger than we realize.” Names alone provide evidence that individuals are made by interactions with social institutions and groups. Ultimately, the inescapable nature of society’s influence demands individuals to ponder how much personal autonomy is actually autonomous and to what extent does the pursuit of personal autonomy lead to a life of emptiness and vanity.
Nowadays it is not uncommon that almost everyone has at least one profile on some sort of social networking site. The reason? To not feel left out. We post online to share what we are doing and how we are feeling. However, social media has influenced us in ways that were not initially planned. Our identities, the concept of what makes you, yourself. Identities are constantly evolving due to social media. We are posting online to make good impressions on the people who follow us. We snap photos and add filters to make ourselves look and feel better. Maybe someone will comment! What if nobody does? Do I delete it? These are constant questions and concerns that go through peoples’ minds during the time they post content. I know those questions run through my head each time I click the share button. It’s almost like we need validation from others for us to be ourselves. When I post, I wait to see the reaction of others, will they like it? When others post, I am constantly comparing myself to them. We are constantly comparing and evolving. Exactly like our identity. Our lives are increasingly more public now more than ever.
There are many aspects of identity in the poem “Sex without Love,” by Sharon Olds. I can relate my own thoughts to how the author views the subject that she talks about in this poem. There has been a situation in my own life where I was thinking to myself, just as the author was, “How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?” (Olds 740). Having been raised as a well-rounded and disciplined person, as well as religious, I know the discouragement of having premarital sex. It’s not just the immorality that these characters are experiencing that the author is talking about, but they probably have personal issues that have to do with a their self worth and identity. These
Stereotypes have been around since the beginning and continue to hurt the lives of certain people in society. Due to stereotypes and prejudice made by certain people, the author, Evan Hunter, successfully demonstrated through the story “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” the consequences of stereotyping. The story focuses on a sixteen year old boy named Andy, and his last moments being alive after being stabbed by a rival gang known as the Guardians. Andy was stereotyped because of his purple jacket that identified him as a member of the Royals. While he is reflecting on his life, four people come by but do not take the time to help. The drunk man
Lately my mornings are spent getting up between 5:30am and 6am. I get myself ready, I never look fantastic just passable, and I go to work. Part of my morning routine is getting my dog, Donovan, ready for the early part of his day as well. We go to the yard for his bathroom routine, we go inside where I feed him his diet dog food and inject him with insulin, we go upstairs where I place a new diaper wrap around his mid-section (dogs with diabetes leak, who knew?), and he goes back to bed to sleep beside my husband. After we say our goodbyes I head to work, or school, or whatever adventure life has for me that particular day. Rinse, wash, repeat. I had no idea when I was in my teenage years that my life at 32 years old would be a tattooed, married, full time working, full time schooling, boring, Puerto Rican, animal lover. Well, the animal loving part I knew since I was maybe 2.
Trauma is physical or mental damage that leaves the victim with lifelong distress, often leading to a poorer quality in life. In “Excerpts from Hard To Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom” by Leslie Bell, the twenty-something women experience psychological trauma when faced with the ambiguity in their pertaining to understanding the fulfillment of sexual relations. In “When I Woke Up Tuesday, It Was Friday,” Marta Stout, the psychoanalytic author, uses anecdotes from her patients to exemplify the trauma experienced by them. The trauma experienced by the patients of both works affects self-perception to whatever extent they permit it. Jayanthi, the bad girl, faced many traumatic events during her years of sexual experimentation
Dissociation is a protective mechanism that stimulates a person to enter into a detached state, in which the person is completely separated from his or her usual thought processes and memories. It is a state activated by one’s nervous system upon reaching maximum capacity to process the “real” stimuli around him or her, thus causing that person to lose track of time and find another representation of himself to continue in that moment. In “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, it was Friday,” author and clinical psychologist Martha Stout explains her view of sanity and dissociation by illustrating some experiences that her patients describe to her through several therapy sessions they have with her. With the use of her patients’ personal
Our identities are formed through a very distinct process in which our senses interpret the events that we experience. By using our senses and our memories, we act according to what our brains remember and create pictures and impressions of ourselves. These pictures and impressions constitute our identities. However, our identities can become complicated by memories that have overwhelming emotional significance. Traumatic memories cannot be remembered as easily as regular memories can, making it difficult to have a strong personal identity. Martha Stout’s “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday” discusses how trauma can cause the brain to incorrectly process memories, rendering them incomplete and
Personal identity is essential in the human experience. Identity is complex and can be broken down into two main groups: introspective identity, and bodily identity. Introspective identity is based off of the groups, mentalities, or beliefs that you align yourself with, and bodily identity is based off of the physical side of yourself. Whether physical or introspective, your identity impacts every action you take. Whether choices ranging from what colors you prefer to which college you want to attend are primarily based off of your introspective identity, which is a combination of both memory and consciousness, physical identity impacts how others perceive you. Consciousness is mainly the awareness of bodily identity as well as continuous introspective identify, while memory is awareness of introspective identity. These two different facets of identity are imperative in the distinction between bodily identity and introspective identity. In means of personal identity introspective identity (which is evident in memory), is essential, while bodily identity (based partially in consciousness) has less credit.
Mental disorders are common in many people, all over the world, and affect all ages. It is characterized as “psychological symptoms or behavioral patterns that reflect an underlying psychobiological dysfunction, are associated with distress or disability, and are not merely an expectable response to common stressors or losses.” (Sue et al., 2014). Mental illness becomes prevalent because of many factors and interactions within the individual. Looking into one specific group of disorders, dissociative disorders, a person has a separation of their consciousness, memory, or identity. One particular dissociative disorder, dissociation identity disorder, will be discussed in this paper. There will be a general overview of dissociation identity disorder,
Identity is what evolves us, it is what makes us think the way we do, and act the way we act, in essence, a person’s identity is their everything. Identity separates us from everyone else, and while one may be very similar to another, there is no one who is exactly like you; someone who has experienced exactly what you have, feels the way you do about subjects, and reacts the same to the events and experiences you have had. This became prevalent to me as I read through many books, that everyone goes through the process of finding who they are. A prevalent theme throughout literature is the idea that over time one develops their identity through life over time, in contrast to being born with one identity and having the same
Many people question themselves, what is it exactly that makes them unique? What is it that defines them as a unique person that no one in the world possesses? In philosophy, these questions do not have just one answer, and all answers are correct depending on which theory appeals most and makes sense to you. In general, there are two ways people approach this question, some say that a person’s identity is the “self” that carries all of their experiences, thoughts, memories, and consciousness (ego theorists), and some say that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences and events that a person has been through in their life, these people deny that the “self” exists (bundle theorists). In this paper, I will be arguing that a person’s identity is just a bundle of experiences, denying the self and the memory criterion.
While childhood seemed like a breeze, my adolescent years were anything but that. Adolescence, the transition between childhood and adulthood beginning with puberty, is a time full of physical and psychological changes both positive and negative. During this time individuals are in search of their identity, a task that can yield a lot of confusion. The question of who am I lingers in the back of adolescent minds and the answer anything but simple. This struggle for an identity and one’s place in society can lead to stress. Through exploration and soul searching, however, one might find their identity. For me, this question seemed impossible to answer, however, I always had a strong desire to fit in and be liked by others. Reading through the different developmental theories in the text, I started to compare them to events in my own life and noticed many significant similarities.