Thursday, 20 August 2015

Contemporary Social Psychological Theories,
Ed. Peter J Burke, Stanford University Press, 2006,
Chapter 5 "Identity Theory" (pp. 88-110), page 89

Stets' second assertion concerns identities:

A person has an identity, an "internalised positional designation", for each of the different positions or roles the person holds in society. Thus individuals have role identities. Each role identity includes all of the meanings that a person attaches to himself while performing a role. These meanings are, in part, derived from culture and the social structure, in that individuals are socialised intoo what it means to be a worker, wife or mother, for example. However, persons also bring into the role identity some of their own understandings as to what the identity means to them. In this way, the meanings associated with role identities are both shared and idiosyncratic, and individuals must negotiate the latter with others who may have a different set of understandings about role-identity meanings.

Hebrew instinctively understands something of this, in that the word translated 'face' in biblical Hebrew is always plural. We have a number of faces, a number of roles that we play, against standard society prototype expectations, but with our underlying self shining through - as it were - a mask made of coloured film of thin material.