To quote Gregory Bateson: “It takes two to know one.” This compact formulation captures a fundamental truth about complex human psychology, and our inherent social nature, which can appear to contradict individual notions of self and personality. To further complicate matters, while some find the concept of self to be grounding, others find stability in the conviction that there is no self. This suggests a provocative modification of Bateson’s formulation: It takes two to no one.
There is an inherent paradox of self, irreducible, and there is no expert consensus, though there are many ardent opinions. To add fuel to the fire, the rapid ascent of artificial intelligence propels the human experience into a new and unfamiliar context for which we are wholly unprepared. How to proceed?
Deconstructing Selfhood
Psychiatrist and interpersonal psychoanalysis founder Harry Stack Sullivan observed in The Illusion of Personal Individuality (1950):
“And so actually, the thing which distinguishes the human being from the human animal is the incorporation in the poor human animal of vast amounts of culture, of socially meaningful, rather than biologically meaningful entities, which exert very powerful influences on all subsequent performances of the creature.”
This suggests that we are more culture than individual self, more “us” than “me”—yet the story of self is both important for the individual and is part of cultural lore. Sociologists discuss that cultures vary on a continuum from individualistic to communal. One’s culture of origin is one of the factors defining basic assumptions about self, assumptions we may not question.
The Emerging Experience of Oneself. Self-exploration, contrary to popular belief, is never really a solitary journey—though there are times of solitude and isolation. The only way to be self-sufficient, paradoxically, is to learn to depend on others. While introspection and reflective practices have value, psychoanalytic theory has long recognized that genuine self-knowledge emerges primarily through interaction. Freud’s basic recipe starts with two: The analysand “free associates,” allowing thoughts to emerge unfiltered, while the analyst listens with evenly suspended attention, avoiding interpretive bias.
In contemporary relational psychoanalytic terms, we seek a resonant state of “intersubjectivity,” where multiple perspectives coexist. This requires maintaining a delicate balance—remaining attuned through both concordance and discord. Ultimately, the asymmetrical Freudian model evolves into a more reciprocal process, in which both parties attend and associate without disrupting the balance, changing the essential role relationship, or undermining the focus on the patient’s needs and development. From a complexity perspective, this interaction forms a “complex adaptive system” or an “autopoietic” (self-making) system.
Defense Mechanisms and Security Operations. The psychoanalytic understanding of defense mechanisms provides a framework for understanding how we shield ourselves from threatening insights. Projection, denial, and reaction formation, among others, protect against psychic pain while simultaneously distorting reality. Paradoxically, defenses can also serve as a roadmap for self-discovery. Encouraging curiosity about reflexive avoidances—asking Where am I afraid to look?—can be more productive than directly probing avoided content.
Sullivan described this as “security operations,” explaining how anxiety shapes perception through “selective inattention”:
“And so we say that the self is a system within a personality, built up from innumerable experiences from early life, the central notion of which is that we satisfy the people that matter to us and therefore satisfy ourselves, and are spared the experience of anxiety. We can say that the operations by which all these things are done—in contradistinction to taking food, getting sexual satisfaction, and sleep, and other delightful things—the operations which maintain our prestige and self-respect which are dependent upon the respect of others for us and the deference they pay us, we call security operations. Security operations are things which we might say are herded down a narrow path by selective inattention. In other words, we don’t learn them as fast as we might; we never seem to learn how unimportant they are in many circumstances where they get in our way.”
The theory of structural dissociation of the personality (Steele, van der Hart & Nijenhuis, 2005), defining three levels of severity of fragmentation. Level 1 is familiar, a split between the world-facing part of the personality (the ANP, or “apparently normal part of the personality”) and the emotional side (the EPs, or emotional parts of the personality). Level 2 maintains a coherenet ANP, but the EPs are split into 2 or more facets, corresponding with moderate complex PTSD and/or personality in the borderline range. Level 3 includes more than one ANP and more than one EP, corresponding with more pronounced dissociative disorders.
Personality Essential Reads
Many Selves, One Self, or None?
Returning to Bateson’s quote—it takes two to know one—we might ask: What exactly is being known? Experts debate the nature of the self, often making adamant claims either for a solid core self or against the existence of any true self at all. Ironically, those who emphasize uncertainty often assert their views with absolute certainty, neglecting healthy self-doubt.
Ultimately, we have many options regarding the self—whether as a concrete entity, an illusion, or something in between. Pragmatically, the concept of self remains central to human experience, even for those who claim not to think about it at all. Whether we accept, reject, or redefine it, selfhood remains a cognitive anchor that demands attention. The neuroscience1, based in network models among others, is better understood but still a work in progress.
Contemporary models also tell us the self may be inherently plural, highlighting the multiplicity of self. Which is to say, rather than having one clear identity, or self, the rule is that we have many different social selves. Correspondingly, our internal landscape is comprised of many different parts of the self, or self-states. The task from this point of view is to map our internal self-state landscape, and develop good internal teamwork—greater integration—among these parts. Co-authors and I discuss the process from compassionate self-awareness, to understanding how our own developmental experiences can lead to fragmentation, to laying out the DREAM sequence of Discovery, Repair, Empowerment, Alternatives and Mutuality in our most recent work, Making Your Crazy Work For You: From Trauma and Isolation to Self-Acceptance and Love.
Practical Implications
This perspective on self concept and development has several practical implications for psychological healing:
- Self-knowledge requires relationship—whether through therapy, trusted connections, or contemplative traditions. In order to be self-sufficent, we must depend on others. Even hermits are only isolated in relation to society.
- Our strongest emotional reactions, including numbing and avoidant responses, tell us where we might need to look, but not how to approach.
- Psychological defenses should be approached with curiosity and compassion, rather than aggressively attacked. It’s important to be safe, but not too safe, to be comfortable with a level of discomfort, and moreover to appreciate instability, within limits.
- Transformation often involves loosening rigid self-constructs rather than, and prior to, reinforcing them. This includes stepping back and taking in the lay of the land, when it comes to considering many aspects of oneself as part of a potentially richer whole.
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