ABSTRACT
Self-images vary from situation to situation, but each man also has a stable sense of personal identity. More students of human behavior have come to recognize the importance of personal identity, for what a man does or does not does depends in large measure upon his conception of himself. Personal identity, then, constitutes one's only tie with the rest of society; each person has status in a community only in so far as he can identify himself as a specific human being who belongs in a particular place. The concept of social status has been utilized in a variety of ways; it may be a person's standing in a community, identifiable in terms of the rights, duties, privileges, and immunities that he enjoys by virtue of his position. The relative independence of self-conceptions of the body is revealed especially in ego-involvements, the establishment of identifications whereby objects that are clearly outside the body are experienced as part of oneself.
