The Problem of Self-Continuity in the Context of Rapid Personal and Cultural Change

Abstract

This chapter will begin by focusing attention upon the under examined problem of just how it is that persons of different ages and life circumstances differently undertake to "conserve" or otherwise vouchsafe their own persistent and continuous identity in the face of evident personal change, and end by reporting upon an ongoing program of research meant to bring out the serious—even life threatening—consequences of failing to repeatedly negotiate ways in which to count successive editions of one's self as "numerically identical" instances of one and the same person. More specifically, we mean not only to write in some detail about those age graded difficulties commonly experienced by young persons as they go about the routine business of trying to make sense of their own personal persistence in time, but also to lay out a series of research findings meant to show that an understanding of such self-continuity issues may prove essential to our own theoretical efforts to explain a variety of important social problems, including the alarmingly high rates of suicidal behaviors especially evident among young persons whose family or cultural life is also undergoing radical change.