Chelsea Swan

I am by no means a scientist or a psychologist, and while books like The Self Illusion are very clever they fall a little flat for me. I understand that from the scientific point of view there is no solid self, that it is a composite of interactions and memories and repeated beliefs and behaviours and that in technicality the self can be completely overhauled in a second and be a new self, and that we are in a constant state of flux. However, I understand this in the way that I understand that my senses are lying to me and that my brain invents sensations and fills in the gaps, and in the way that I understand that memory is not real and is just a memory of the last time we remembered a thing and therefore it can be altered and manipulated to suit our desires. These things may be true scientifically but philosophically I am a self, and it is all I have, I have senses and they are my gateway to the world, I have memory and real or not it does like to torture me with pleasures and pains. The self may not be scientifically solid but that does not negate that my human experience consists of the self and that I have been unable, for most of my life, to express that self with truth, or the fact that the self that I have (real or not real) is under a gaze, under social and cultural pressures, has expectations placed upon it, and therefore I have been buried and hidden in order to fit in, in order to protect the self, and a projected second self has been created in order to survive. This book confuses an abstract truth with psychological reality. There is a importance and validity of the psychological self, which is just as real and important as our bodies. The book disregard’s philosophy and skims psychology and the point is what???? That we have less control over ourselves, our free will and our thoughts than we would like? Well done that is the female experience. Maybe it was a revelation to a man that this would be the case. Are we to have less attachment to the perceived core self and the need to prove ourselves to be a person, to be unique? This feels psychologically dangerous and not as freeing as it may appear. I have bpd, no solid sense of self, let me tell you it is terrifying and dangerous. My intelligence is all I have, my thoughts and opinions, my drive to express and find a solid self that is free to speak my own truth. Most women live hidden even now. These sentiments, if pushed, could be used to keep them hidden, stay quiet, stay in the home, don’t make a fuss, there is no self anyway, unless you are a man, writing a book of anecdotes, to push a theory.