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By Root 568 0

In his influential first book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman argued that much of human interaction can be likened to theatrical performance, in which we variously play the roles of involved actors or passive audience members. For all the reverence in Western society given to being “true to oneself,” intentional artifice pervades much of our lives. We dress, talk, act, and react in ways designed to evoke desired responses in others. In Goffman’s words: “control [over the behavior of other people] is achieved largely by influencing the definition of the situation which the others come to formulate, and [the individual] can influence this definition by expressing himself in such a way as to give them the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan.”

Goffman himself admitted that he was by no means the originator of this idea: “[t]he general notion that we make a presentation of ourselves to others is hardly novel.” Nearly 350 years before, in As You Like It, William Shakespeare famously wrote that “All the world’s a stage/And one man in his time plays many parts.” That classic collection of military wisdom known as The Art of War is laden with encouragements to deceive one’s enemies (and even one’s allies!) by making false shows of strength and weakness (e.g., “all warfare is based on deception”; “practice dissimulation, and you will succeed”). The English word person originates from the Latin word persona, which meant both “dramatic character” and “mask” prior to its use as a general term for “human being.” We still commonly use persona as a general term for a public social role enacted by an individual. Clearly, the recognition that human life is anchored in strategic presentation is no recent insight.

Indeed, if you examine your own life, you might find some similarity to Dexter (hopefully not too much similarity). Dexter feels pressure to keep his secrets secret, but he also longs to reveal those secrets to the world. He alters his actions to fit his audience, much like you may present yourself differently when at work (industrious), on the athletic field (competitive), with your parents (respectful), and at the local tavern (fun-loving). Beginning in adolescence, all people experience a growing realization that there is a multiplicity of selves from which to choose, and that peers, parents, and important social others put constraints on which self we display at any given time. This often causes distress, as the young person is unsure which set of behaviors makes up the “real” self. Older adolescents typically arrive at the conclusion that frequent and strategic shifting of behaviors across situational and relational contexts is both necessary and desirable, and that it need not indicate that one is somehow fake or dishonest. (As the poet Walt Whitman famously wrote, we contain multitudes.)

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson argued that this problem of identity achievement vs. identity diffusion (or role confusion) is the core developmental conflict of adolescence. Extending Erikson’s ideas, developmental psychologist James Marcia proposed further subdivisions of identity maturation, including identity foreclosure, which occurs when a person adopts some value system, occupational aspiration, etc.—typically imposed by parents—without ensuring that it truly fits the self. Here, Marcia describes the adolescent in the grips of identity foreclosure:

It is difficult to tell where his parents’ goals for him leave off and where his begin. He is becoming what others have prepared or intended him to become as a child . . . one feels that if he were faced with a situation in which parental values were nonfunctional, he would feel extremely threatened.20

Compare Marcia’s description with this candid self-assessment of Dexter’s in an early episode: I’m not sure where Harry’s vision of me ends and the real me starts (“Let’s Give the Boy a Hand”). And as described in Marcia’s theory, we usually find Dexter gets into considerable trouble when he encounters problems to