ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will deal with issues which relate to the self, identity, personhood and subjectivity. Some of these issues are extremely vexed in that they generate a confusing plethora of definitions and theoretical explanations. By contrast, the traditional developmental perspective, coloured by a modernist conception of self, promotes the deceptively straightforward point of view that every person has an identity and a self. However, troubling questions immediately arise about the meaning of words like self and identity. The assumptions underpinning any statement about self and identity are open to severe challenge. The very concept of self is under siege from postmodernist writers inside and outside psychology. For example, some theorists (e.g. Gergen, 1988) have suggested that the notion of the individual self is just a misleading and spurious construction – a reference without a referent. Others (e.g. Markus and Nurius, 1986) question whether there is one self or many co-existing selves.
