ABSTRACT
As a result of the demands and expectations of modern society, there is a growing contradictory yearning among people to construct one’s self in order to achieve material success and also to be existentially authentic-that is, to feel true to one’s self. From self-help approaches (e.g. Ban Breathnach 1998), to pop philosophy (Covey 2004), and academic treatises (e.g. Dews and Law 1995) such discourses on authenticity abound. While the rise in attention to authenticity is not surprising considering the changing cultural context of our times (Erickson 1995), more surprising is the scarcity of clear scholarly conceptualizations of authenticity and of empirical research on it.
