The Invention of the Self

The story weaver and the problem finder combine with other elements from your Narrative-Self to form a nexus that creates the caretaker. Each contributor is simple and functional on its own, but the interactions among them make the voice in your head and what it feels like to be you complicated and produces a great deal of conflict for you, both in

Depending on what you were told when you were assembling your identity, you are either certain of yourself, confident in your dealings with others, and sure of your own superiority; or, conversely, you are timid, ashamed of yourself, and shrink from interaction with others, convinced that they think you worthless. To use psychiatric jargon, people

The language is dualistic: self and other. But the result is non-dualistic: no-self, no-other, just letting go and trusting. Self-power is given up in order to become Other Power; or, Other Power becomes self-power.

Susan Engel... has written “We are who we are by virtue of what we have experienced, but part of who we are is determined by what we imagine.“ Through her work with children, Engel has been able to identify five phases of increasing sophistication in childhood storytelling.

First, toddlers learn they have an extended self .(connecting to memories) I