Two selves in one

By Carrie Porche Jones, On-Line Forty-Niner

Wednesday, October 14, 1998

The notion of a self, in the sense that we know it, is inconceivable if we do not recognize that we have both inner and outer selves, said John Haiman, linguistics professor at Macalester College, in his Odyssey lecture Tuesday in the Multimedia Center.

"There is some kind of an inner self that has the some kind of power to act on projecting an image and also, therefore, in some sense, transcends the image which plays a role in the world," Haiman said.

This inner self is bigger than the world of appearance and the transcended self is the notion of identity. No matter what happens to you on the outside, such as changing your clothes, your physical fitness and other aspects of your appearance, beneath these changes, you are still the same person, Haiman said.

"Your own perception of identity, more than anything else, comes from memory. You have your story and only you know that story," Haiman said.

Memory is almost as deceptive as outside appearances for establishing memory because it can play the same tricks on you that appearance can, Haiman said.

To illustrate his point, Haiman used an example from "Of Memory" written by Thomas Reid in 1795. In the story, a brave officer had been flogged at school for robbing an orchard. Later, the officer takes a standard from the enemy in his first campaign and then is made a general. When he took the standard, he was conscious of having been flogged at school.

When the officer is made a general, he remembers taking the standard, but does not remember the flogging. He is the same person who was flogged, but because he does not remember the flogging, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore, the general both is and is not the same person who was flogged.

"If there is one thing you can acknowledge and recognize as being part of this divided self model, (it) is that there's an inner self, which is sort of like the wizard in the "The Wizard of Oz," which manipulates you to lead, and there is another inner self which puts you to work," Haiman said.

"The inner self is the actor and agent and the outer self is the body, the image that you project."

The idea that we wear a mask and the face beneath atrophies and becomes the mask we wear is just an uplifting speech of nonsense, Haiman said.

Haiman, a Canadian citizen, was born in Romania and is known for his study of language of the Hua Tribes in New Guinea and the authorship of "Talk is Cheap - Sarcasm, Alienation and the Evolution of Language," an Odyssey press release reported.