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  individuation of genuine personality
through Self efficacy becoming
authentic identify-in-difference

gary e. davis
August 9, 2017
January 23, 2026
 


It’s important to appreciate that personalness is a derived mode of Sselfality (S/s differentiable selfidentity, which I’velately called oneSself). Selfality isn’t a general-
ized sense of personalness (i.e., being a person). One’s background individuation of Self instills senses of selfidentical Flow and released belonging which preceded any sense of clear selfidentity.

Selfness, being, is inborn, enabling individuated later conceptions of oneSself as singular person or oneSself. Individuation of mentability—childhood through adolescence—evinces a manifoldness of oneself (senses of selfidentication) which coheres relative to prevailing background interests (individuated through so much time), enabling a possibly-secure, purposefully-cohering selfidentity of oneSself.

Initial differentiation from persons begins in infancy—self/mother difference— furthered in toddler identity formation, so-called “ego” formation, though incipient s/p difference remains largely defuse in the later years of many selves (which sounds odd, because one rightly refers to oneself as singular, rather than as selves).

Sometimes inhibition of individuation compels dependent attachments in emerging adulthood—lacking freely-chosen bonds; or inhibition prevents gaining reflective distance in interaction—worse yet: causing self-defeating co-dependence (which isn’t yet worst of all: major mental disorder).

Persons, selves, who do easily gain a sense of scenic distance in interaction may have a good feeling for self/personal difference that’s creative or/and efficacious for interpersonal life.

But genuine interpersonal interaction is not what’s typically called “role playing”! Ease of gaining scenic distance is not an instrumentalization of interaction.

Also, s/p difference is not primarily self/other difference. It’s difference between
[a] oneself (with oneself) and [b] oneself with persons: self with/in [inter]personal interaction.

Sense of a person as other is derivative of interpersonal interaction with another “person” (self in personal interaction with another self in personal interaction). Regarding persons as others—vastly common, of course—tends to connote alienation from a very-selfal person (so to speak) to oneself. Indeed, we’re commonly alienated from each other: interacting in role-defined compliance; civil strangers warily passing by.

However, differences between genuine engagement and role distance (or scenic distance) are important and can become easy to appreciate. My life anymore, in interaction with others, is nearly always “scenic” [s/p differentiated] (yet, I’m oriented by mutuality), seldom self expressive (or spontaneously self possessed), except with an increasingly-smaller “set” of friends. Here (this page), I am as I please—which happens to be in no way spontaneous; rather, I’m deliberately wanting to make good sense.

So, I would argue (or: I could detail), good self centeredness (which is not egoism; rather, secure, creative mindfulness—more on this upcoming) involves an effective capability for appreciating s/p differentation among different interpersonal modes of one’s life. Highly individuated Selfality (protean Self, let’s say) involves a good feeling for self-reflective (S/s-differential) cohering of s/p-differentiated inter-personal life (or of being-in-the world scenically) as oneSself engaged in many ways with one’s days and with one’s enowned era of life.

I’ll elaborate this later in a conception of dramatic action (not theatricality) or “dramactionality.”

Sselfidentical lifeworldliness is a life (S/s-differential flow) world of s/p-differential engagements with persons—including personifications of things!: Listen to everyday speech and writing. We intentionalize or personify everything—especially nature. Phenomenality of each day is full of unwitting mirrorwindowings—self-implicative disclosures confessing our personifying appreciability and Self-reflective comprehensibility.


January 23, 2026: I’ve done some revision to this page from 2017, but I wouldn’t approach a sense of identity-in-difference that way today. I’m motivated by current writing which links to some previous pages here which link to this one. I haven’t gone on to revise the next page linked below, nor others in the series. Someday, I’ll re-do the entire “mind evolving” series.



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