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Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self

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Identity: cultural change and the struggle for self._book reviews Psychology Today November, 1986

The Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once said that "to define is to exclude and negate.' Perhaps that is why psychologist Roy Baumeister has chosen to describe rather than to define the central idea in Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self (Oxford University, $ 19.95). Identity, as Baumeister points out, is difficult to define, yet we all firmly believe we have one. And conceptual difficulties don't stop most of us from glibly discussing "identity crises' and "the self' as if these were concrete things.

Baumeister is on strongest ground when he examines identity from a historical vantage point. His clear discussion of the evolution of personal identity, from virtual nonexistence in the Middle Ages, through its gradualawakening during Renaissance, Romantic and Victorian times, to its place as a daily preoccupation in 1986, is convincing because it is well grounded in secondary historical sources.

Oddly, the book loses momentum when, in the last few chapters, the discussion turns to psychology. In the chapter on development of identity, for example, Baumeister ignores current ideas about the multiple bases of personality and fails even to mention psychoanalytic theory. Other passages concerning psychological topics, such as the chapter on brainwashing, have little or nothing to do with the lucid chapters on history that precede.

In his introduction, Baumeister acknowledges that the evidence for his arguments lies outside his own field of expertise. Unfortunately, so does his best writing.