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

Overview

• Speaker: Sam Vaknin, author and professor of psychology. Topic: distinction between identity (self/core identity) and behaviors; exploration of memory, legal responsibility, and dissociative identity disorder (DID; multiple personality).
• Central thesis: How one behaves is not who one is. Core identity (self) is largely immutable once formed in early childhood, while behaviors, intentions, plans and choices are changeable tools the self uses.

Key points and arguments

1. Identity vs behaviors

• Core identity/self forms in early childhood and becomes stable, immutable, and continuous across time and changing circumstances. Vaknin references psychoanalytic and personality literature (Freud, Jung, Kohut, etc.) to support permanence of the self.
• Behaviors are variable and context-dependent; people can dramatically change roles (e.g., criminal to counselor, black hat to white hat) without the self changing. Behaviors are described as instruments or tools (fork/knife/spoon analogy).
• Identity provides a sense of continuity, contiguity and exclusion (boundary between self and world).

2. Evidence and thought experiments

• Body changes (amputation, aging) do not abolish selfhood; person remains the same despite physical change.
• Legal example: a murderer at 19 who is captured at 79 is still held accountable, demonstrating continuity of identity across decades (even with Alzheimer’s or amnesia).
• Corporate analogy: corporations retain continuity of identity despite turnover in personnel; legal and social systems treat them as the same entity over time.

3. Definitions and theoretical perspectives

• APA definitions cited: identity as a sense of self with continuity; self as totality of attributes (conscious and unconscious). Identity theory, token identity theory, and neurobiological grounding (brain states) mentioned.
• Historical/theoretical survey: James, Jung (individuation), Adler, Horney, Allport, Kohut — varied emphases (self as dynamic or stable, developmental processes, narcissistic development).

4. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and multiple selves

• DID (formerly multiple personality disorder) raises hard questions: if different alters commit actions (e.g., murder), which alter/person is morally or legally responsible?
• Vaknin’s position: psychologically there may be distinct self-states that lack shared memory; however, legal systems typically hold the embodied person responsible regardless of alternate states.
• He argues that even in DID the “self” as continuous identity is what the law typically assumes; yet clinically DID shows how memory fragmentation undermines a coherent, shared identity.

5. Memory, continuity, and the role of the unconscious

• Memory is central to experiencing continuity of self — linking past, present and future into a narrative. Vaknin emphasizes the narrative function of selfhood (organizing, explanatory role) and calls it rigid in the sense that it binds events into one explanatory story.
• However, relying solely on memory and introspection can be circular and excludes the unconscious. Psychoanalytic traditions emphasize unconscious processes as major determinants of behavior and selfhood; modern psychology often downplays the unconscious.
• Vaknin discusses the problem of inaccessible/unconscious content: if the unconscious is vast and shapes behavior, can a memory-based conception of identity capture the self?
• He proposes a reconciliatory view: the self is always present (an “all-pervasive” core) but not always consciously accessible. Memory and introspection are modes to access the underlying self. He introduces the idea of an intermediate “unthought known” or preconscious/background mental states that are not always conscious but are part of the self.

6. Philosophical considerations and conditions for identity

• Referencing Locke (hardware/brain and communicable inner world) and later philosophers, Vaknin summarises conditions for recognizing an identity: same brain/hardware; ability to communicate inner world and manipulate environment; stable, long-term intentional patterns and memories (accepted by others as well).
• He discusses problems of circularity (using memory to define identity) and notes the intersubjective problem — we cannot directly access other minds; identity reports are undecidable in some philosophical sense.

7. Clinical and legal implications

• DID challenges both psychological and legal concepts of responsibility: if memory is fragmented and alters do not share memory, psychological responsibility may not align with legal responsibility.
• Legal systems typically hold the person accountable despite dissociation; psychological criteria for identity (shared memory, continuity) may conclude otherwise.
• Examples: SS criminals, exculpation debates, brain-in-a-jar thought experiments, vegetative states, Kosakoff syndrome and cases from neurology where patients lose access to memories and the sense of self.

8. Synthesis and final stance

• Vaknin ultimately defends the notion of a stable, immutable self that provides continuity. He acknowledges psychoanalytic critiques but reconciles them by proposing the self is always present though sometimes inaccessible to consciousness.
• Memory and introspection are access mechanisms; failures of memory (e.g., amnesia, DID) produce the appearance of identity fragmentation but do not negate an underlying self.
• The self binds bodily states, memories, skills, habits, emotions and cognition into unity; behaviors remain changeable expressions of that underlying unchanging self.

Notable examples and metaphors used

• Tools analogy (behaviors as tools like fork/knife/spoon); body/amputation example; aging contrast; murderer at 19 captured at 79 (legal responsibility); corporation as persistent identity (IBM); river metaphor (Buddhism); brain-in-a-jar thought experiment; ‘self as narrative’ and ‘rigid document’; “body snatching/demonic possession” imagery for DID.

Implications, tensions, and unresolved issues

• Tension between everyday/legal practices (action-oriented, behavior-focused) and deeper psychological/philosophical claims about the primacy of being over doing.
• Ongoing debate: is identity stable/immutable or fluid/processual? Vaknin answers in favor of stability but offers a nuanced position that allows for temporary inaccessibility and unconscious influence.
• DID remains a pivotal challenge: clinically supports the notion that continuity requires shared memory; legally often treated differently.

Conclusion

• Reaffirmation: identity (self) is distinct from behaviors. Behaviors change; the self provides continuity and endures.
• Memory and introspection make the self manifest but do not create it; the self is omnipresent and can be inaccessible. Case studies (neurology, DID, legal cases) illustrate the complexity but do not overturn the core claim of stable identity.

References and authorities cited (selected)

• Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William James, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Gordon Allport, Heinz Kohut.
• American Psychological Association (definitions of identity and self).
• Philosophers: Locke, Hume; reference to clinical literature and neurological syndromes (e.g., Korsakoff’s syndrome).