The idea of identities is not new; many names have been given to them and lots of explanations of how they come to be. Many schools of thought mention identities or ego and have for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. But much about identities, how and why they are formed, their characteristics and make-up, their relationship to people’s problems, how to deal with them, and their relative importance in a person’s search for self-actualization was not known prior to this work. Finding out who you really are may be as simple as discovering who you are not.
Having identities is not in itself harmful to the individual. The assumption of identities as given in the examples above does not usually cause a person any difficulty. But the unknowing assumption of certain identities that people get stuck in, believing the identities to really be them, can create all sorts of trouble for the individual.
We can liken an identity to a suit of armor. When the knight puts on the armor it limits his movement but it is useful in certain circumstances. But imagine that once the man dons the armor he forgets that it is not him, and he believes that the armor is part of his skin. In other words, there is no longer any separation between him and it. In battle all is well, as he is protected by the heavy, metal covering. Later, though, walking by a lake he sees people swimming and decides that he, too, would like to swim. He jumps in and he sinks. Someone pulls him out of the water, and as he lies on the bank he thinks to himself, “What’s wrong with me? Other people can swim but I can’t.” Here is the unwanted condition. And all that he would have to do is to take off the armor, but he doesn’t know that it is not him.
The above analogy may be a bit simplistic, but it does serve to demonstrate how an unwanted condition is the property of an identity. People are “sunk” by identities that they think themselves to be and from which they cannot get themselves unstuck. A good definition of “stuck” in these circumstances is “being without noticing.” Unaware of identities, people may believe that they are limited, and can invent a myriad of reasons and explanations that might seem to make sense, and allow them to feel better for a while, but do not resolve their unwanted conditions.