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This essay focuses on people’s tendency to create alternate selves in cyberspace; the author calls them “virtual personae.” As she sees it, this act is reflective of the fact that the self is not unified (as Freud imagined it in the ego) but is actually fragmented and split (more of the Lacanian school). The author brings in psychoanalytic theory in order to present the lack of a unified self in a positive way. She posits that the internet (and social networks, online communities, chat rooms, Multi-User-Domains) is actually helpful in reconciling the many parts of the self and helping them develop. She argues that the internet age is not fragmenting the self, it has just concretized and illustrated this trend which was already happening. What she calls “the multiplicity and flexibility” of self is actually a liberating thing with the potential to help the self function healthily in a variety of circumstances. Sometimes these online personas can even help a person work through repressed parts of themselves. The author is careful not to be advocating a sort of multiple personality syndrome; she emphasizes that in order for the multiplicity to be productive, the individual must be very self-reflective and aware.
I found this article to be a refreshing change from some of the more cynical pieces I had read about identity and the internet. It’s encouraging to think that the fragmentation that people talk about in terms of online identity formation and multiple forms/representations of self could actually be a way to come to a greater realization of self. Rather than fragmented, it is optimistically “adaptive” and “flexible” (647). Of course this is not the case for all internet users who create virtual personae; some people could hide behind these identities rather than learn from them. In that way, the argument is a little bit idealist. Thinking about the author’s argument in terms of contemporary social networks online, there is definitely the possibility for defining oneself in a certain way on one’s profile and exploring other parts of the self in that process, but I think that especially with adolescents (much of the Facebook and MySpace demographic), they are often not ready to reconcile the multiplicity of selves and simply use the networks to project a certain image. It might take more time for them to self-consciously ask themselves why they are trying to create a certain virtual personae, and maybe then they will reach the potential that this article discusses.
I found this article to be a refreshing change from some of the more cynical pieces I had read about identity and the internet. It’s encouraging to think that the fragmentation that people talk about in terms of online identity formation and multiple forms/representations of self could actually be a way to come to a greater realization of self. Rather than fragmented, it is optimistically “adaptive” and “flexible” (647). Of course this is not the case for all internet users who create virtual personae; some people could hide behind these identities rather than learn from them. In that way, the argument is a little bit idealist. Thinking about the author’s argument in terms of contemporary social networks online, there is definitely the possibility for defining oneself in a certain way on one’s profile and exploring other parts of the self in that process, but I think that especially with adolescents (much of the Facebook and MySpace demographic), they are often not ready to reconcile the multiplicity of selves and simply use the networks to project a certain image. It might take more time for them to self-consciously ask themselves why they are trying to create a certain virtual personae, and maybe then they will reach the potential that this article discusses.
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tagged identity_formation internet psychology social_networks virtual_persona by rachee ...on 10-MAR-07
tagged identity_formation internet psychology social_networks virtual_persona by rachee ...on 10-MAR-07