Robert
Jay
Lifton
PROTEAN MAN
I should like to examine a set of psychological patterns
characteristic of contemporary life, which are creating a new kind of
man - a "protean man."
As
my stress is upon change and flux,
I shall not speak much of "character" and "personality," both of
which suggest fixity and permanence. Erikson's concept of identity has
been, among other things, an effort to get away from this principle of
fixity; and I have been using the term self-process to convey still
more specifically the idea of flow. For it is quite possible that even
the image of personal identity, in so far as it suggests inner stability
and sameness, is derived from a vision of a traditional culture in
which man's relationship to his institutions and symbols are still rela–
tively intact - which is hardly the case today.
If
we understand the
self to be the person's symbol of his own organism, then self-process
refers to the continuous psychic recreation of that symbol.
I came to this emphasis through work in cultures far removed
from my own, studies of young (and not so young) Chinese and
Japanese. Observations I was able to make in America also led me
to the conviction that a very general process was taking place. I do
not mean to suggest that everybody is becoming the same, or that
a totally new "world-self" is taking shape. But I am convinced that
a new style of self-process is emerging everywhere. It derives from
the interplay of three factors responsible for human behavior: the
psychobiological potential common to all mankind at any moment in
time; those traits given special emphasis in a particular cultural
tradition; and those related to modern (and particularly contem–
porary) historical forces. My thesis is that this third factor plays an
increasingly important part in shaping self-process.
