Does the idea of “intentional understandings of identity” make sense to you?
- What stands out to you about “intentional understandings of identity?
- Do you have any stories from your own life, practice or teaching experiences that best illustrate intentional understandings of identity, and distinctions between this approach and internal states approach to identity?
- How do you describe your approach to identity to others who are not yet familiar with narrative practice (without resorting to words like “poststructuralism” or discourses)?
The lesson on intentional understandings of identity struck me as the creation of a ‘market’ of possibilities of meanings and purposes which the actor is free to choose to from ( that is why it is intentional).
I have been in the know of people who have had episodes of psychosis which as Tom in a previous lesson mentioned defies conventional psychiatric understanding and hence is diagnosed as an illness but again I have seen such individuals become highly functional in cultures which ‘understand’ psychosis as a normal expression of identity within their cultures. This is incompatible with the internal states approach to identity.
I would describe my approach to identity to others who are not yet familiar with narrative practice as “Active Agency of Compassion”
When I first began reading about narrative practice last year, the post-structural concept of identity was one of the things I struggled with the most. I managed to find a way into it with the idea of attributes and strengths being things that we actively choose to carry with us, or wield – rather than things we ARE. It reminds me of a video game where you can pick up particular tools or attributes or qualities and keep them in an inventory and get them out when you need them. I had worried, when I first read about post-structural ideas of identity, that it felt like it *took away* agency, and reduced us as people. But then a switch flicked, and I realised (or at least felt!) that if you are actively choosing which qualities and attributes to wield, then that actually gives you MORE agency and self-determination and personhood.
I think the texts in this lesson have enlarged on that conception, and I’m beginning to see identity as an even larger, more dynamic thing, bringing in circumstances and relationships and more, but I’m still not able to fully articulate this.