Need for Identity: False Self and Ideology

Self-perception is crucial for a mature independent individual. A damaged perception of self gives rise to the fear-based false self that can easily feed from destructive ideologies.

Photo by Inkredo Designer on Unsplash

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” These words of Master Yoda in the legendary Star Wars saga contain deep wisdom about the relationship between the fear-based perception of self and the destructive influence of ideologies on the human psyche.

The 2020s can be characterized as a period of dramatic polarization worldwide and a huge step back from the civilized ways we, as humanity, have managed to secure during the second half of the 20^th century. Then, at least, it seemed we had come up with some peaceful framework to help sustain civilization. But, of course, it was not all that nice and fluffy. Wars and violence have not vanished, even after 1945. Racism and bigotry have always existed as unfortunate aspects of the human condition.

The polarization that we are witnessing today has nothing new. Still, instead, it is an inescapable feature of human nature that is prone to rely on polarizing narratives and ideologies in times of instability and insecurity. The ability of these narratives and ideologies to flourish is directly linked with processes happening inside the human brain and, more specifically, is linked to fear in the absence of the true self. Catastrophic thinking, seeing the world as insecure and empty, and observing only negativity and threats are typical characteristics of many activists and political figures. These features, much like the very same features found in the totalitarians of the past, have particular pathological attributes related to the damaged perception of self. Although I tend to be a realist and think that the human condition will always remain the same, I also hope that a better understanding of how we shape and develop our missing identity through group narratives can help us retain the civilizational gains more predictably.

Human Social Brain and Trauma

Humans are social beings and cannot exist in isolation. Speaking philosophically, human beings are the form of matter at the level where it can reflect itself, deploying a particular organ responsible for this function – the brain. The self-reflection of matter using the human brain produces thought. However, we have been created so that reflection is only possible once we can interact with other representatives of our species. This means that our brain, as an organ responsible for the matter being able to reflect itself, is also social. Our cognition is impossible without communication, which connects us in the information exchange with other humans.

Human consciousness has two dimensions as well – individual and social. Our personal knowledge, beliefs, and ideas that develop through our individual experiences make our individual consciousness. The general ideas, concepts, behavioral norms, and values that mirror the collective social life of the community or group of people with whom we live come to represent the social dimension of our consciousness.

The human brain, as a central node of the nervous system, besides thinking and producing consciousness, fulfills a lot of other functions critical to sustaining our physiology, such as regulating our heart rate, the release of hormones and neurotransmitters, the feeling of hunger, sex drive, most of which are beyond our conscious control and thus existing in the realm of what we call unconscious. The brain accomplishes this by activating the autonomic nervous system's sympathetic and parasympathetic subsystems. The former prepares us for action, and the latter calms us down to engage in other processes, such as consuming food and enjoying the present moment. Either of these subsystems can become predominant, depending on how our brain is shaped through genes and the environment.

For survival, the conscious and unconscious parts, although they specialize in their jobs, are profoundly interrelated and affect each other, being elements of one system. This means that our conscious human representation is affected by the primitive, basic, instinctive parts of our brains. The more our conscious and thinking part of the brain controls the unconscious reflexive reactions and the more it stays aware of our inclination to behave instinctively, the more humanity we express to the world. But our pathway through life is a constant balance between the supremacy of either conscious or unconscious. This is what, in actuality, is given and what we need to deal with every day, engaging in various situations and interactions. This defines how we feel about things and what we do about them.

The unconscious part is much more powerful since, evolutionarily, it appeared much earlier than a more sophisticated conscious and thinking part. It is an important limitation as the default mode of our existence is reflexive¹ and unconscious; becoming conscious requires much effort. The unconscious brain is our main engine from birth until age four. The non-thinking components of the brain predetermine all our reactions to the external world at this stage. The outcome of these reactions in the primitive brain is either positive or negative. Exposure to threatening, unpleasant, unhealthy, and hostile environments and situations leads to adverse reactions. These reactions are recorded in the brain in a particular neural configuration and expressed as a specific body behavior in the external world. They can be active or passive, attacking or fleeing – “fight”, freeze”, or “flight”. The repeated learned behaviors form our habits – autonomous ways of behaving in typical situations.

Since the purpose of these reactions is to protect our survival, they become known as our defenses. At the level of brain operations, these reactions are embodied in the chains of neurons (brain cells) or neural pathways. Smaller chains connect with other small chains forming more extensive neural networks. Neurons in different parts of the brain make neural networks responsible for specific functions – cognition, emotion, perception of sounds, vision, etc. For example, each new interaction of a child with the people and things around him or her creates a specific response encoded by a new neural pathway. The more this situation is repeated, the more the same neurons fire together, the more solid their connection is, the more permanent the neural pathway, and the more fixed particular behavior are.

Extreme situations with severe negative effects that the brain perceives as threatening our survival produce what is referred to as trauma in psychology. Due to the primary function of ensuring survival, the brain learns from negative situations much faster and better than from positive ones. This learning is ensured by releasing significant amounts of neurochemicals (dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine) that initiate long-term neural potentiation (intense firing of neurons in neural chains), creating favorable conditions for neuroplasticity or learning. That is why we remember harmful incidents much better than good ones.

In certain traumatic situations of high intensity, especially related to violence, our memory works in the opposite direction to protect us by way of dissociation of neural networks where an incident may not be remembered consciously at all while existing only at the level of the unconscious memory. It is also true that although the environment plays a significant role in the formation of the brain's actual functioning, certain features that make us more vulnerable to external factors and predetermine our higher or lower propensity to pathology come from genes. The expression of these features through activation or inhibition (suppression) of specific genes through the environment, or the epigenetic mechanism, should also be accounted for in the understanding of certain ways the unconscious and conscious parts of the brain work.

Consciousness is developed under the influence and direct effect of the unconscious since there is no segregation between these two sides of human nervous activity. Much of what and how we think, the way we make decisions and reason, is dramatically influenced by the unconscious parts of the brain.

The part that plays the role of the command center of our brain that takes input from the outside world and distributes tasks to other parts of the brain and body is called the thalamus. In conjunction with the thalamus, two other brain areas, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, release hormones and neurochemicals to launch certain processes in the body or prevent them from happening. Another critical system in the coordination of brain activity is called the limbic. The limbic system is primarily responsible for emotions and memory. The main actors here are the amygdala and the hippocampus. Amygdala appraises the incoming information and defines it as vital or threatening, thus coding it as positive and desirable or negative and dangerous. This appraisal is the basis of our survival, and amygdala function is therefore prevalent in importance in our brain. Amygdala is responsible for the most powerful feeling we have, the feeling of fear. The hippocampus is responsible for generating episodic memory, or memory of situations. After processing the memories, the hippocampus pushes them to the brain's cerebral cortex, connected with our consciousness and thinking. Working together, these brain parts shape our interaction patterns with the environment and create permanent, or typical, unconscious responses to the outside world.

Thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala operate in an unconscious mode. Still, they carry a crucial role in communication between our nervous system, which is responsible for the body's functioning, and the conscious thinking part of the brain. The communication between the conscious and unconscious parts of the brain is bidirectional. One of the principal functions of the conscious part located in the prefrontal cortex is to down-regulate the more primitive brain areas that are so powerful that, in essence, their activity pre-defines most of our behavior. In many religions, these brain areas were supposedly considered the location of the soul or the third eye. The graphic depiction of the regions of the brain has a very strong resemblance with the Eye of Horus in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It probably tells us that these brain parts are extremely important in how we perceive reality and how we lead our lives. And it tells us about the power of the unconscious parts of the brain in shaping our cognition and consciousness.

For a child, in the early years, even seemingly insignificant influences may radically affect the neural pathways in the traumatic direction. It is specifically related to attachment, a biological mechanism ensuring our survival by our social dependence on our parents and mother in the first place. Because of the child’s vulnerability and the need for external protection, the mother and child appear strongly connected biochemically. A child’s brain substitutes its missing conscious part with the mother's. The mother’s regulation of her own emotions and states is passed on to the child non-verbally – through facial expressions, the sound of the voice, and the milk taste. The mother is also participating in the regulation of the emotions and states of her child. Father’s states and emotional regulation, as of everyone in the child's immediate environment, are equally crucial to the child. But the biological proximity of the child to the mother makes her the main connector of the young human being with the world and the primary regulator of emotions.

Stress, anger, fear, and despair of the mother feed the child psychologically. So do happiness, joy, and satiety. The way the caretaker can control one’s emotions biologically is transferred to the child. Distressed parents create a situation of insecurity for the child, further shaping the specific insecure style of the child’s attachment at the unconscious level. Exposure to stressful environments at later stages of the child’s development, when the conscious brain gets into operation, transfers the features of insecurity into the realm of consciousness.

Studies show that traumatic experiences or insecure attachment models lead to the inability of the frontal thinking brain areas to regulate subcortical primitive regions that take a primary role in assessing and responding to any ongoing situation. This leads to the increase of the perception of reality as more threatening and the consequent reflexive and reactive behavior while switching off our ability to reflect and take emotions under control. An important dimension that gets disturbed by the trauma is the perception of self and the resulting challenges in identity. The domination of such brain areas as the amygdala in defining behavior and selecting information affects self-perception and identity creation.

Anakin Skywalker “Syndrome”: Trauma of Self-Perception and Crisis of Identity

To function as independent entities, we all need a sense of self that identifies our boundaries, strengths, and limitations, allowing for a planned activity in the surrounding environment. The sense of self and separation from the other occurs in the brain areas forming the so-called Default Mode Network (DMN). More specifically, these brain areas are responsible for the perception of self, perception of others (theory of mind), autobiographic memory, comparison of self and the other, self-awareness, and visual spacial organization.

The conditions of secure attachment and a supportive childhood environment allow for the development of what the English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called the true self. The true self is subject to secure attachment and a sense of safety with the simultaneous respect for autonomy and separateness of the child, which leads to the expression of curiosity and exploratory behavior, engagement of the child in his or her activities and interests, and results in building the perception of self which is based on the child’s own needs, emotions, and inclinations. Insecure attachment and an unsafe environment stifle the motives of exploration and prioritize catering to the needs of others by developing a false self that is busy regulating the emotions of others and thus unable to discover own interests and wants. The false self creates a dependent individual lacking his or her own essential nurtured identity based on the actual interaction with the world and positioning oneself in it.

The adverse influence on the Default Mode Network and insecure attachment damage the perception of the world, others, and self. Individuals with damaged DMN face challenges with developing a holistic sense of self, regulating their own emotions and behavior, being self-reflective, and feeling empathy for others. The traumatized DMN leads to reactivity and a constant need for action while being guided by primitive emotions, specifically fear. The fear is so prevalent that the damaged DMN does not allow affected individuals to stay alone. This behavior is conducted with the domination of the amygdala and the repression of rational thinking. The most serious cases of DMN damage may be represented by severe psychopathologies with high anxiety levels and increased threat perception.

The constant amygdala activation is related to the higher levels of chronic stress, which negatively impacts imagination, creativity, and development of the inner sense of self while enhancing defensive mechanisms – negative perception of the environment and others, isolation, shame, and the constant feeling of fear. As a result, daily life appears on the negative side, the prevalent emotions are also harmful, and social situations and consumed information increase anxiety. In addition, subconscious fear stimulates negative bias in reasoning, information selection, and mindsets. In this vicious cycle, the negative information feeds anxiety and fear, pushing the individual towards compulsive behaviors.

While self-perception is shaped at the level of biochemical and physical processes by developed neural pathways in designated areas of the brain, thanks to the fact that everything in the brain is connected with everything, it affects an individual cognition, decision-making, reasoning, selection of the focus of attention, memory, and other subsystems. It also affects what we put into the world to be recognized by others. The outward representation of an individual shaped by self-perception and autobiographic narrative forms identity. The traumatized and affected perception of self and the other will cause a traumatized, affected, and vulnerable identity. Not linked to understanding own feelings, needs, and interests, the false self will pave the way for the false, the “missing” identity open to superficial self-definition. The underlying need to be appreciated and accepted opens up a possibility for an external narrative to bring safety and security that can help a traumatized mind aiming at self-preservation to eradicate anxiety and finally achieve peace.

The false, empty self of the traumatized individual can paint the world as innately hostile and evil. It can define own existence as less fortunate than that of others around. The logical outcome is the story about oneself where the victimized self and the abstract good of the world need to be saved by taking radical actions and where the more fortunate ones (that do not deserve their success) must be punished. This yet undefined story is the beginning of the new identity that can get rooted within an ideology, a form of social consciousness instead of individual consciousness. This is the same undefined story of Anakin Skywalker traumatized by the death of his mother that induced insecure attachment, allowing for the narrative of the Dark Side of the Force to crystalize in the identity of Darth Vader.

Ideology and the Foundation for the Superficial Identity

The human brain is social. The neural networks are shaped by the effect of the environment of the social groups in which we live – family, local communities, and nation. Thus, in our identity, in everything we do and think, we are constantly linked with the social component to a greater or lesser extent, directly or indirectly, when we internalize the attitudes of the society we are part of. The actions of others affect our brain's conscious and unconscious structures. The neural networks of the conscious part of the brain that are responsible for critical thinking are aimed at regulating our unconscious impulses. When this function is undermined by trauma, it may be taken over by the elements of the social consciousness – the ideology. In an individual with a false self, the traumatized unconscious overwhelms the thinking brain and reduces the effect of the individual cognition.

We can define ideology as a qualitatively higher level of awareness by a community of people of their needs, experiences, values, and attitudes. Ideologies exist as a specific theoretically grounded set of views and beliefs of a social group, focusing on the group’s identity in relation to other groups and the world around them, as the group’s aims and goals. Since ideology is rigid, it provides a solid framework for the identity of “us” in opposition to the others – “them”.

It becomes very easy to see how such a robust framework of group self-awareness as an ideology can substitute for the individual identity in the absence of the true self. The hurt recognition (social or hierarchical) and survival instincts enhance irrational drives for individual self-preservation, which he or she seeks inside a group. The need for safety and security and the need to advance within society are channeled through the need to belong to a group. The attitudes of a group, its identity, and its goals with the “us vs. them” paradigm make it easier for an individual with a damaged self-perception to understand what is happening around him or her.

The ideological (group) framework provides a powerful foundation for the individual’s identity. It helps shape his or her ego, manifesting in certainty and conviction about the self and the world. An ideology's “us vs. them” paradigm is necessarily based on the perceived existence of an external threat that becomes a replacement and metaphor for the earlier experienced personal threat (stored in the unconscious) that caused trauma.

Instead of fighting own detrimental patterns of thought and behaviors, which would alleviate pain, the focus for a traumatized individual may be shifted towards saving any entity or group that is perceived as vulnerable. This shift happens through transferring the object of injustice from the child self to the other with whom the individual now identifies as a savior. Although all humanitarian actions are beneficial and desirable, the way a traumatized mind is engaged in them is detached from the actual state of things. Since the effort of the traumatized individual is not based on genuine premise, it is not sustainable. It originates in the desire to feel good about oneself, to be accepted, and to get more “dopamine”. It leads to an action that has no connection with the real injustice or problems, nor can it help heal the individual’s pain.

In trying to alleviate the pain caused by the trauma, the hurt brain picks up an ideology. It turns it into an individual mindset of a certain type – the “savior mentality”. The “savior mentality” is a mindset whereby the traumatized individual is trying to control the behavior of others instead of controlling one’s behavior while aiming at self-regulation at the expense of others that “have to be saved”. The origin of the motivation for “saving” is not rooted in the genuine desire to help but in an attempt to derive dopamine-releasing self-gratification from the actions that are directed outwardly. The absence of own boundaries diverts a person’s effort from helping self towards helping others and develops a new story of superficial self. It happens unconsciously while the individual has never been able to recognize what parts of the self are his or her own and what parts are the defenses of the unconscious brain originating from the early traumatic experience. This process is caused by the inability to see oneself as a separate entity.

The confrontational feature of ideology realized in the “us vs. them” pattern of worldview and the obligatory threat component are easily picked up by the catastrophic thinking of a traumatized individual. The false self rooted in fear of making mistakes creates a highly emotional anxiety-driven approach to problems. Confrontational ideological appeal, with its innate inter-group differentiation, substitutes for the missing individual self-other differentiation of the traumatized personality. The persuasiveness of the ideological language and the resulting patterns of thinking rely on the vivid imagery with dark tones and connotations of meaning when referencing the object or group that causes an “existential” threat and lighter, positive connotations when referring to the in-group identity, values, and course of action.

Not being able to identify the true essence of his or her suffering, the traumatized person projects the pain into the external world, trying to find the objects of the pain. These external objects become conceptualized as the objects of suffering and injustice; they become victims. The traumatized psyche creates victims to engage in various rituals (symbolic behaviors) that assign pain, identify enemies, and come up with remedies that are as superficial as the victimhood itself. It is superficial because the reason for its existence has nothing to do with reality but instead with the individual's wrongly recognized (self-)healing motives. Superficial victimhood becomes a substitute solution for the traumatized individual brain.

The Path to the True Self

The social outcome of externalizing pain and assigning objects of pain (victims) substitutes effective actions against real injustice. The traumatized individuals get on board with populist programs and action agendas of marginal social actors. The individual outcome of such externalization of relieving internal pain appears quite predictable. The traumatized person gets deeper and deeper into the fight against non-existent issues while draining internal energy that could be used for healing and the development of the true self.

The correct but non-intuitive way to overcome the effect of the false self is to reactivate the inhibited brain systems that help build the true self. These systems are the ones that rely on curiosity, exploration, and creative reflection of the surrounding world.

First and foremost, the internal narrative that causes pain must be changed through observing and becoming aware of how self-criticism and feeling of shame repeatedly appear in situations of mistakes or failures. Mistakes in the healthy mode of self-discovery must be reconceptualized as “helpers” instead of “enemies”, a possibility to upgrade oneself since the “trial-and-error” principle is the primary law of learning. Of course, major mistakes causing significant damage to other people must be recognized, accepted, and amended, but far too often, these mistakes are not what the traumatized brain deals with in everyday life.

The drive to “save the world” must be understood as an empty aim disguised by an empty signifier. The focus must be redirected towards working on oneself as the primary actual and worthy object of change. Developing own interests, dedicating time to personal development, and learning to get joy and appreciation from what one can do for oneself should become the main priorities. This can be achieved through trying new activities (socially-, situationally-, and age-appropriate) regularly, deriving pleasure and motivation from repeated engagement with them day after day. Developing routines and controlling one’s time by saying “No” to the priorities of the false self will also lead to discovering one’s true self.

Instead of searching for victims, it is more beneficial to take accountability for our actions today, working to save ourselves from the wrongs caused to us and our brains when we cannot make sense of the world while not victimizing ourselves. Now, we can understand our current feelings, emotions, and behavior patterns. The fear and anxiety-based behaviors are the defensive reaction of internalizing rejection of our caretakers in the early days of our lives. Extreme self-criticism is a defensive mechanism based on the shame installed in us as kids; it is “the invisible other” that we need to learn to recognize to obtain the true self. Working on the true self will require the revision of values and attitudes.

This work will also require recognizing the moments when we experience extreme shame that can be hidden behind other negative feelings, followed by the examination of the situation in a detached way. Do I feel I am a bad person? Am I ashamed? What really happened? Was there any real damage caused? What could have been done better? Is the appraisal of the situation too extreme? This is a reality check when feeling inadequacy, anger, or frustration. Of course, the eternal civilizational values apply to the situation appraisal too. Do not kill. Do not steal. Treat others as you would like to be treated. All these are moral imperatives that must be checked. The question is whether the self-judgment in the particular case is relevant to an objective situation or is based on negative self-worth based on another person's opinion in the present or past.

Instead of punishing injustice as a self-glorifying stance, it is more beneficial to the true self to give justice to oneself: valuing one’s own time and not wasting precious hours fixing something that one has nothing to do with, enjoying one’s own life, engaging in activities that bring positive emotions, multiplying this experience by doing it regularly, and healthily getting dopamine. The new habits developed through creativity, curiosity, and exploration will lay the foundation for the new narrative of the true self. The narrative of the true self will be embodied in the new alternative neural pathways, which will facilitate better neural network integration (cognition, emotions, perception), enable greater regulation of emotions by the prefrontal cortex, and better control of the unconscious reflexive drives by the conscious part of the brain, relieving anxiety and fear. Of course, this is not the only thing that will enable true healing but is part of the journey toward less misery.

Following civilizational values, we should not tolerate injustice in our close circle, nor grant silent approval to unfair treatment towards friends or strangers, human or other species, but putting on the helmet of a morally superior human and going around actively looking for what to change about the others only masks the strong internal need to take care of oneself. “Judge not, and you shall not be judged” but also “Love thy neighbor as you love thyself”. These two pieces of wisdom probably make a statement for working on oneself first to gain one’s true self, which will reflect in true identity.

Ideologies are not evil by themselves; they are a necessary and natural part of the social consciousness. They evolved for group cohesion and survival which enabled the survival of each individual in the group. Ideologies served the function of the nation’s building and have shaped powerful movements of change. But ideologies can be positive and creative or negative and destructive. Their creative or destructive essence can be seen in their semantics, the meaning they convey, and the way they select subjects, objects, and tools of change that impact their bearers' behavior. All that said, it does not mean that one needs to stay silent when injustice is happening, but before speaking about saving others, it is probably more beneficial to develop internal harmony in the first place by creating the true self by nurturing genuine self-perception and building individual identity.

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On True and False Self, DMN (and its pathology), attachment (secure and insecure): Cozolino, L. (2017). The neuroscience of psychotherapy: Healing the social brain (3rd ed.). W W Norton & Co.

More on neuroscience: https://hubermanlab.com/

My research on Ideology and Discourse (Narrative Macrostructure, Communicative Strategies, Semantics):
1. Smirnov, A.I. Aktantnaja model’ kak makrostruktura ideologicheskogo diskursa (na primere analiza statej diswkursa globalizacii) / A.I. Smirnov // Vestn. MGLU. Ser. 1, Filologija. – 2011. # 2 (51). – S. 136–145. (Smirnov, A.I. Actantial model as macrostructure of the ideological discourse (based on the analysis of articles of the globalization discourse));
2. Smirnov, A.I. Jazykovye sredstva realizacii kommunikativnyh strategij v diskurse globalizacii / A.I. Smirnov // Vestn. MGLU. Ser. 1, Filologija. – 2011. – № 5 (54). – S. 52–62. (Smirnov, A.I. Language means implementing communicative strategies in the globalization discourse);
3. Smirnov, A.I. Bazovyje semanticheskije komponenty leksicheskikh markerov diskursa globalizacii / A.I. Smirnov // Vestn. MGLU. Ser. 1, Filologija. – 2011. – # 1 (50). – S. 28–38. (Smirnov, A.I. Basic semantic components of the key lexemes in the globalization discourse).

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This essay is not a dogmatic statement of truth but rather a result of self-reflection, observations of other people, and analysis coming from the neuroscientific, psychological, and sociological works of the great minds in the past and present. It is a hypothesis that can (should) be tested. It is not targeted at any particular group. Instead, it looks generally at why we represent ourselves to the world the way we do and why some representations can take extreme forms.

1. Here and further: reflexive means based on reflexes, automatic, unconscious reactions; juxtaposed with reflective meaning able to reason and reflect, conscious and based on deliberation.