It seems that we do not have a permanent Self but several that change according to different contexts. These different Selfs function as guides for our individual and social behavior.
Our Self assumes multiple aspects according to the social role we have in terms of family, profession, affinity groups or interpersonal relationships, activities performed, and personality traits. These different Selfs possess different characteristics of ourselves that make up a particular one according to our physical capacities, preferences, goals, etc.
For example, the corporal Self refers to bodily awareness; the social Self to interaction with others and the desire to please; the spiritual Self in terms of the tendency to pay attention to one’s thoughts and feelings; the phenomenal Self concerns subjective experiences; the behavioral Self applies to the embodiment of a certain behavior; and the cognitive Self is understood as an information processor.
It is said that we do not have a fixed personality since there is not a single and determined Self, but rather an image is projected according to the context in which we are found and different roles are adopted conformed by signals and actions, which makes our behavior vary according to the situation.
Identification with the bodily Self
Sigmund Freud also gave his interpretation of the Self as being, first and foremost, a bodily Self that governs voluntary motility through muscular activity, bodily sensations, and perceptions as itself and in opposition to external objects. He proposed that the purpose of the Self would be self-preservation in a double sense: in the face of the external world, we perceive stimuli from the environment and we avoid those that are too intense and generate displeasure, and we accept those that are moderate and cause us pleasure.
Through sensory experiences, we come to an understanding of how our bodily Self adapts to the environment through the development of motor skills, evolving into an active and independent agent.
Our identification with skiing technique begins with the identification of our body Self. For many of us, personal self-valuation in skiing is found in the perception of the body image in movement, that is, in the way we execute technical movements and actions.
We identify our body with who we think we are, that is, with our external appearance, which results in our own appreciation as skiers. In some cases, we do not feel our body and its movements, but we identify ourselves with the mental concept of our body and its movements. To mentally identify with our physical body instead of our sensitive body is a source of anguish.
Our Self is present in all psychic manifestations and extends its psychic influence throughout our body as an instrument of expression of mental activity. When we say “my legs hurt”, “my hands are cold”, or “my feet feel tired”, we make a double appropriation: we attribute to ourselves the psychic activity of the Self insofar as we are conscious of the states of pain, temperature and tiredness; as well as we attribute to ourselves the belonging of those bodily parts: “my legs”, “my hands”, and “my feet”.
The personification of ‘Good Self’, ‘Bad Self’ and ‘No-Self’.
According to psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, three general personalities are traversed in identity formation: the good Self, the bad Self, and the no-Self.
The good Self is associated with pleasant experiences, the bad Self with threats to security, and the no-Self with the rejection of intolerable anxiety. For example, the good Self is about the child’s experience of the parents’ complacency for his good behavior, while the bad Self is organized on the basis of the parents’ disapproval of the child’s behavior, which generates anxiety and insecurity.
The schemas of the Self are modified throughout skiing. The image of our skier Self changes over time. The lonely and shy beginner we were in our approach to skiing can be transformed into solid and energetic skiers, but this real-skier’s-Self does not completely eliminate the image of our beginner Self, since certain situations can bring us back the image of the previous stages of our own evolution.
If we undergo a distressing experience, the robust image of the expert-skier-Self may be overshadowed by the defective or incompetent one of our initiation in the activity and repeat the lack of personal value. When experiencing the distressing situation, the image of the competent skier Self (good Self) is masked by the image of the incompetent Self (bad Self), momentarily surfacing a sense of vulnerability.
Our good skier Self would be reinforced by rewarding attitudes each time a good performance is achieved. We feel stimulated by the activity and by continuous progress, considering ourselves ‘good’ skiers.
In contrast, our bad skier Self appears when successions of various negative experiences have created different levels of criticism or reprobation in terms of our relationship with anguish, shame, and guilt for not being the skiers we expect or we desire to be.
In our personal skiing evolution, we go through difficult stages such as control of balance, speed, and direction. We can go from a state of enthusiasm and euphoria (good Self), to being disconcerted by going through a stage of anguish and disconsolation (bad Self). These are situations in which we find ourselves powerless, being these anguish generators.
Self-evaluating as good skiers means that certain mental processes of introspection and location above the Selfs have been carried out, that is, self-observation, comparing that observation with other referents, and establishing a positive self-dialogue to reach the conclusion that we are good skiers.
The no-Self, according to the philosopher Johann Fichte, refers to the opposite of the Self, that is, to everything that is not part of it and its opposite.
The no-Self is personified from very acute experiences of anxiety, being poorly understood life aspects. The no-Self would refer to our denial of the identity of the skier´s Self due to overwhelming emotional experiences of very intense dangers that block our ability to understand what we are going through. The sudden and critical situation generated that our personality, precarious at that moment, did not understand nor sense the cause that produced that experience. Thus, we go through moments of intense fear that do not allow us to explain what happened, which disturbs the normal organization of our skier Self.
The Group Self
According to Freud, the person who belongs to a group reverts to an infantile state since “a group is impulsive, changeable, and irritable” and is driven almost exclusively by the unconscious. According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, the group mentality is a shared common background formed by the desires, opinions, thoughts, and emotions of its members.
When we are part of a skiing group, it is likely to think and act differently from how we would as an individual because group behavior tends to be uncritical and susceptible to influence.
By belonging to a group, we “substitute our individual Self for a group Self, diminishing our conscious personality and focusing our thoughts and feelings in a common direction,” says Freud. In the group’s mind, “the individual renounces the ideal of his Self and replaces it by the ideal of the group, embodied in the leader”, where the ‘we’ becomes the ‘collective Self’.
A group is characterized by having a common interest or a similar emotional inclination towards a certain situation, such as, for example, going on an off-piste adventure.
Daniel Goleman, psychologist and writer, argues that “when functioning optimally, a group can make better decisions than any of its members individually”, but it should also be considered that, according to psychologist and professor Irving Janis, “groupthink leads to errors in decision-making, errors that increase the possibility of bad results, especially when conformist pressures begin to dominate“. This author also states that “the friendlier the team spirit among the members of a group, the greater the danger that critical and independent thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which, most likely, will generate irrational actions”.
