The self: Why are you like you are?

THE first time a baby smiles, at around 2 months of age, is an intense and beautiful moment for the parents. It is perhaps the first sure sign of recognition for all their love and devotion. It might be just as momentous for the baby, representing their first step on a long road to identity and self-awareness.

Identity is often understood to be a product of memory as we try to build a narrative from the many experiences of our lives. Yet there is now a growing recognition that our sense of self may be a consequence of our relationships with others. “We have this deep-seated drive to interact with each other that helps us discover who we are,” says developmental psychologist Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol, UK, author of The Self Illusion (Constable, 2012). And that process starts not with the formation of a child’s first memories, but from the moment they first learn to mimic their parents’ smile and to respond empathically to others.

The idea that the sense of self drives, and is driven by, our relationships with others makes intuitive sense. “I can’t have a relationship without having a self,” says Michael Lewis, who studies child development at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “For me to interact with you, I have to know certain things about you, and the only way I can get at those is by knowing things about me.”