ABSTRACT
Robert Lifton noted that our sense of self has become radically different in the modern era in which psychologists, philosophers, and social scientists "engage in continuous exploration and personal experiment". Proteus was the Greek sea god of many forms, and so Lifton labeled the modern mind the protean self. Lifton developed this idea when interviewing Chinese in Hong Kong and Japanese university students. The protean self brings together disparate and seemingly incompatible elements of identity in odd combinations and continuously transforms these elements. Lifton noted that the protean self can have a positive outcome or a negative one. On the negative side, it can result in psychic numbing, a diminished capacity to feel, and a state of meaninglessness. The protean self needs communities that are partial, fluctuating, come in odd places and combinations, and vary greatly in their intensity and capacity to meet the needs of the members.
