How You BEHAVE is NOT Who you ARE (Identity, Memory, Self)

Main Ideas

• Behavior is not the same as identity. The speaker argues that actions, plans, choices, values, and goals can change substantially while a person’s core “I” or self remains fundamentally continuous. A person may change careers or conduct without becoming a different person.

• The self provides continuity. The self is described as the stable center that links experiences across changing circumstances, including aging, illness, emotional turmoil, and changes to the body. It also creates a sense of boundary between oneself and the outside world.

• The self is portrayed as a narrative. The speaker likens identity to a durable personal story that organizes changing behavior and gives life a sense of coherence. In his account, behavior can shift while the underlying identity remains.

• The body alone does not define identity. Examples such as aging and limb amputation suggest that major physical changes do not necessarily erase the sense of being the same person. The speaker gives the brain and psychological continuity a more central role than the body as a whole.

• Identity and responsibility persist over time. A hypothetical person who commits murder at 19 and is caught at 79 is still treated as the same individual, even if their behavior or mental state has changed. The speaker uses this example—and the continuing legal identity of corporations despite changes in staff—to illustrate how law and society often assume continuity of identity.

• Culture encourages people to equate actions with identity. The speaker attributes this confusion partly to a society focused on action, achievement, possessions, and measurable outcomes rather than on “being” or inner life. He criticizes this as materialistic and objectifying.

How the Speaker Develops the Argument

1. Distinguishes the self from changeable behavior. The self is presented as the “who” that acts; behavior is treated as a set of adaptable tools or responses.
2. Uses examples of continuity. Aging, bodily change, criminal responsibility across decades, and corporations are offered as cases where identity is understood to persist despite other changes.
3. Considers competing psychological theories. The speaker reviews views in which identity may develop or change throughout life, as well as theories that emphasize unconscious processes.
4. Examines memory’s role. He first presents shared memory as central to continuity, especially when discussing dissociative identity disorder (DID), then revises that claim: memory and introspection may be ways to access identity rather than requirements for identity to exist.
5. Applies the argument to DID. The hypothetical Dan, with alters John and Joseph, raises questions about whether one person should be accountable for another alter’s actions. The speaker distinguishes legal responsibility from the psychological question of whether the alters share a continuous self.
6. Concludes with a stable-self position. Despite exploring alternatives, he ends by affirming that the core self is enduring, while behavior, beliefs, plans, and other attributes can change.

Memory, Unconscious Processes, and DID

• The speaker discusses a tension between a stable, lifelong self and theories in which the self is a dynamic process, shaped by unconscious drives, early experiences, social relationships, and changing circumstances.
• He notes that unconscious material may influence behavior even when it cannot be recalled or examined directly. This complicates any definition of identity based only on conscious memory and introspection.
• He proposes that identity may remain present even when it is not consciously accessible. In this view, memory and introspection help a person recognize or retrieve a sense of self rather than create it.
• DID serves as the central challenge to the idea of one continuous identity. In the example, Dan’s alters may have separate memories and patterns of behavior. The speaker argues that this creates a serious psychological problem for the idea of a single, coherent self, even though legal systems may still hold the person responsible as one individual.

Criteria Discussed for Recognizing Self-Identity

The speaker’s discussion suggests several conditions people use when judging whether someone has a continuing self-identity:

• A human-like physical and neurological basis, especially a brain.
• Communication of an inner life that others can recognize and understand, along with interaction with the environment.
• Relatively consistent patterns of intentional, volitional, and memory-related behavior over time.
• The ability to recognize some continuity through memory or introspection.
• Recognition by other people as a continuing individual.

These are ideas presented in the speaker’s discussion, not a universally accepted diagnostic or legal checklist.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Speaker: Sam Vaknin, the sole narrator.
• Sources and thinkers referenced: The American Psychological Association’s dictionary; Sigmund Freud; Carl Jung; Alfred Adler; Karen Horney; William James; Gordon Allport; Heinz Kohut; Erik Erikson; Melanie Klein; Donald Winnicott; David Hume; Jacques Lacan; Ronald Fairbairn; Christopher Bollas; and Buddhism’s comparison of a person to a river.
• Other references and examples: Dissociative identity disorder; Korsakoff syndrome; Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; the McNaughton test; IBM and corporate legal identity; Adolf Eichmann and Nazi-era crimes.