THE SATURATED SELF: DILEMMAS OF IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE

PREFACE

THE SELF UNDER SIEGE

Intro

The Self: From the Romantic to the Postmodern

The Cultural Location of Self

The Self Through History

Language and Encumbering the Self

Coming Attractions

FROM THE ROMANTIC TO THE MODERN VISION OF SELF

Intro

Romanticism and the Reality of the Deep Interior

The Rise of Modernism

The Grand Narrative of Progress

The Quest for Essence

The Metaphor of the Machine

The Production of Modern Man

The True and Accessible Self

Manufacturing the Individual

Personality and the Autonomous Individual

SOCIAL SATURATION AND THE POPULATED SELF

Intro

The Technologies of Social Saturation

High Life in High Tech

Air Headings

Vistas of Video

Electronic Innovation and the Proliferation of Relationships

The Process of Social Saturation

Multiplying Relationships

Bending the Life-Forms

Intensifying Interchange

Populating the Self

Multiphrenia

Vertigo of the Valued

The Expansion of Inadequacy

Rationality in Recession

TRUTH IN TROUBLE

Intro

Modernism and the Coming of Multiplicity

Crisis in the Academy

From Facts to Perspectives

The Knower as Demagogue

The Disappearance of the Knower

Separating the Knower from the Known

Fathoming Other Minds

The Deconstruction of Mind and Object

THE EMERGENCE OF POSTMODERN CULTURE

Intro

The Loss of the Identifiable

The Social Construction of Reality

Authority Challenged

The Breakdown of Rational Order

Self-Reflection and the Intrusion of Irony

FROM SELF TO RELATIONSHIP

Intro

The Human Being in Question

Gender Gerrymandering

Constructed Selves

The Strategic Manipulator

The Pastiche Personality

The Emergence of the Relational Self

Languages of Relationship

The Social Ownership of Personal History

The Emotions Among Us

Morality Beyond the Individual

A COLLAGE OF POSTMODERN LIFE

Intro

Breaking the Binds that Tie

The Crisis in Intimacy and Commitment

Fractional Relationships: "Why Not Take One-Eighth of Me?"

Ersatz Being

Invitation to the Carnival

Toward Serious Play

SELFRENEWAL AND SINCERITY

Intro

Resistance to Retrenchment

The Nostalgia for Leadership

The Return to Inner Resources

The Cementing of Community

The Half-Life of Sincerity

Fractionation and Compensation

From Passion to Performance

Movements and Metaphors

RECKONING AND RELATIVITY

Intro

A Centennial Damage Report

Progress, Pregress, and Pluralism

From Individualism to Relational Realities

Totalizing Discourse vs. the Free Play of Being

Conflict and Convergence

Formatting and table of contents extraction by

The Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence