Philosophy, et cetera 2008-05-08

Authentic Development

More from that NPR story:“If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it, or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” -- Dr. Diane EhrensaftI'm sympathetic to this as a developmental approach. But there's something deeply puzzling about the central concept of the authentic self, or "who they really are". It seems intuitive at first, but when you stop and think about it, what does this really mean?(1) One thing it might mean is that we are all born with a particular Platonic 'form', template, or image of the specific adult we ought to become. We might call this form our "soul", or "true self". Environmental influences which bring our earthly bodies to more closely resemble the ideal form of our ...

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