The Protean Self – Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation - Softcover

Lifton, Robert J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226480984 ISBN 13: 9780226480985

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1999

Synopsis

"We are becoming fluid and many-sided. Without quite realizing it, we have been evolving a sense of self appropriate to the restlessness and flux of our time. This mode of being differs radically from that of the past, and enables us to engage in continuous exploration and personal experiment. I have named it the 'protean self, ' after Proteus, the Greek sea god of many forms."--from The Protean Self

About this title

Review:

"Lifton has challenged the conventional social-scientific wisdom of the last half century. . . .He has called attention to the emergence of a new form of self and considered it in a bold and imaginative light."--Howard Gardner "Boston Book Review "

"A fascinating and appealing book. . . . As he revises the psychology of the self, Dr. Lifton is subtle, even profound, in drawing a line between multiplicity and fragmentation. To those who are nostalgic for the age of the unitary ego, his message is that it is better to be fluid, resilient and on the move than to be firm, fixed, self-assured and settled. To those who worry that the post-modern age is an age of shattered selves, dissociative states, multiple personality disorders and identity diffusion, Dr. Lifton brings the good news that discontinuity can be a mirror of reality, and the standard for a reasonable life."--Richard A. Shweder "New York Times "

About the Author:

Robert Jay Lifton is Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at John Jay College and the Graduate centre of the City University of New York, and at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is also director of the centre on Violence and Human Survival. Dr. Lifton is the author of many books, including The Nazi Doctors and Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, which won the National Book Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0226480984
• ISBN 13: 9780226480985
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272