misperceiving them through representations of a group or seeing our image of them as their real self, rather than the accumulation of past relationships. I elaborate on this in the next section.
For now, Ichheiser (1949) talks of one final style of misinterpretation that he calls the “mote-beam mechanism” (p. 52), which is akin to the projection of our own characteristics onto another person who does not actually possess those characteristics or, alternatively, characteristics we perceive in others but deny in ourselves. However, the main aspect of the mote-beam mechanism—and what distinguishes it from projection—is that we may correctly perceive characteristics belonging to another person or group, ones that we also possess or that belong to groups we are a member of, yet we think that we, as an individual or group, are free of the same characteristics. The example Ichheiser gives is seeing others as prejudiced but ignoring our own prejudices or those of our own group. For instance, we may correctly attribute racial prejudice to extreme right-wing groups and condemn it but then fail to perceive the more subtle, everyday forms of racism that exist all around us. Indeed, as Ichheiser points out, social scientists may study the prejudices of others but remain blind to their own prejudices or those of the social groups to which they belong.
self-defense against a more powerful group or part of a struggle for self-determination in which the group had little choice but to act in this way. On the other hand, if our image of the group is negative and we view them as, say, a terrorist organization, then the act of violence will be seen as an unjustified atrocity. In this way, we can assume completely different attitudes toward the same act depending on our image of the person or group that performs the act. In Ichheiser’s view, then, it is not our attitudes or emotions that form our relationships, but, instead, it is the images we form of others in our relationships with them—images that are often distorted—that determine our attitudes and feelings toward them.
This leads Ichheiser (1943, 1949) to a framework of images in human relations that I want to adapt here, as presented below, along with my reasons for a slight but, in my view, significant modification.
Individual A (or group) Individual B (or group)
1. Image a′ 1. Image b′
How does A see him/herself with reference to past relations?
How does B see him/herself with reference to past relations?
2. Image a″ 2. Image b″
How does A see him/herself with reference to his/her relation to B?
How does B see him/herself with reference to his/her relation with A?
3. Image a′″ 3. Image b′″
How does A believe him/herself to be seen by B?
How does B believe him/herself to be seen by A?
4. Image a″″ 4. Image b″″
How does A see B or some facts related to B?
How does B see A or some facts related to A?
My addition to Ichheiser’s original scheme is primarily found in the first entry (No. 1) in the above framework; Numbers 2 through 4 have only a few minor modifications from his original framework. As Ichheiser presents it, his framework focuses solely on what is happening within a relationship (e.g., interaction between A and B), how they perceive and form images of themselves and each other, whereas in most of our relationships, we bring something of the past to any new encounter.
So if A and B are meeting for the first time, they will no doubt want to make a good impression on one another, but how they do this will depend on past relationships and the image they have formed of themselves because of that. If A has always been relaxed in the company of others and feels that he/she is good at meeting new people, maybe even enjoying doing so, he/she will probably be confident in their self-image when meeting B. However, if B sees him/herself as awkward when meeting people, B could be quite tense or reserved when meeting A. This will then feed into the subsequent relationship and formation of images between the two, as in Numbers 2 through 4 in the above framework, which is not necessarily a temporal sequence but a pictorial representation of what can happen between two people in an instant.
For example, A might think, “I’ve been relaxed and friendly with B; why is he/she being so reserved or defensive? Doesn’t he/she like me?” At the same time, B might feel that “A is so confidant, and I feel even more nervous and shy now; how can I ever speak to B? He/she will not like me.” Here lies misunderstanding, miscommunication, and misapprehension between A and B, in which they form distorted images of each other. A might imagine that B is cold, unfriendly, and does not like him/her, while B might imagine that A is brash, overfamiliar, and insensitive.
Each has a distorted image: A does not see B’s shyness and lack of confidence, while B fails to see A’s warmth, desire to be liked, and lack of confidence (“Don’t they like me?”). In this sense, as Ichheiser so clearly shows, there is both the visible and the invisible in human relationships and the formation of images of the other;
what our image of the other allows us to see or misperceive and what complexity, ambiguity, and contradictory elements are excluded that make up the self or personality.
What Ichheiser does not say about this scenario is twofold. First, distorted images not only arise in our relationship to others, but they also occur in our relationship to ourselves. Images we form of ourselves can also hide and render invisible certain aspects of ourselves, including our needs and desires, that we either do not acknowledge or that we deny—similar to what Freudians refer to as repressed or unconscious material. However, I have tried to reframe the concept of the unconscious through a dialogical, existential, and interactive theoretical approach, conceptualizing it as a dialogical unconscious (Burkitt, 2010a, 2010b).
In my framework, the unconscious is dialogical because it is created through the images formed in interaction, communication, and miscommunication with others and with our own selves. For example, in the earlier scenario about the meeting of A and B, the dialogical unconscious is what remains invisible, not only in the relationship between A and B because of distorted images, but what remains invisible to each about their own self. A may fail to recognize that his/her ease with others and desire to make friends and be liked hides a deep fear of being alone or abandoned. Likewise, B may not recognize that his/her shyness and poor self-image hides a deep self-loathing formed in earlier negative relationships or that a desire to be liked and to get along with others is masked behind a poor self-image that acts as a barrier to self-expression, leading to such feelings as “They would like me if they could see the person I am inside” or “If only they could see the real me.” This presents us with the second aspect of self that Ichheiser does not touch on—the way we would like to be seen by others and how this might or might not appear in the distorted image of self and others.
Other problems with Ichheiser’s approach can be found, particularly those cen- tering around an overly dichotomous approach to issues of “outer” and “inner” per- sonalities and “impression” and “expression.” For him, impressions are formed by the conscious or unconscious processes of interpretation (some of which were dis- cussed earlier) that create a relatively stable image of the other, so that these pro- cesses form aspects of the “outer” personality in that they are a social psychological phenomenon arising within social relations. Conversely, expression largely arises as
an “inner” process constituted by the expression or suppression of inner feelings or by gestures that symbolize to an observer a person’s state of mind.
Referring to the work of Charles Darwin, Ichheiser (1949) suggests that psycho- somatic mechanisms control the processes of expression that have evolved in the history of the human species but are modified in the socialization of each individual in terms of how the processes of expression and repression form a particular person- ality. In my view, however, Ichheiser too starkly depicts the opposition of outer and inner and impression and expression, when, in fact, these processes overlap. For example, Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) challenges the idea that expression is simply the outward manifestation (or suppression) of inner processes. To illustrate this, Merleau-Ponty presents the example of two friends meeting on the street, eliciting mutual smiling and waving or other warm gestures of recognition. Here the expres- sions are simply part of being in the world, in this case a mutual response to a given situation, rather than being the manifestation of a world divided between the inner psychological realm and the outer world of impression formation and management.
Thus, we smile and wave because we see our friend coming down the street, and these bodily expressions are a result of the meeting that is happening in the world.
This is important because we then have to understand expression and impression as processes that occur between people, as both are locked together into a complex formation depending on the relationship between two or more people. I do not form impressions of the other solely on the basis of my own perceptual or interpretative processes; I also form impressions because of how that person behaves toward me and from what I see in his/her expressions, the same being true from the point of view the other takes toward me. Indeed, expression and impression are part of the relational and interactive process that occurs between people rather than being the result of internal expression management and external impression formation. If, for example, we return to the meeting between A and B, in which B is feeling nervous and unsure of him/herself but wants to hide this from A, instead appearing confident and relaxed, B’s performance is unlikely to come off with total success. B may not be able to hide nerves and uncertainty, and A, if observant, will more than likely pick this up. The impression A forms of B is of someone trying to be assured when actually B is nervous and uncertain. The situation is similar to the one cited by Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) above, only slightly more complex, in that A and B are both responding to being in a certain situation together, but this time one is trying to conceal his/her spontaneous expression to his/her circumstances, with little success.
The division between the “inner” personality or “personality itself” versus the external impression formed by others has another consequence in Ichheiser’s work, one that has had far-reaching consequences in social psychology, particularly through its influence on thinkers like Goffman (1959/1969). The consequence is that the expression people put on for the social audience can be seen as a mask, or, as Goffman puts it, as a performance staged by the actor that can hide his/her true motives, feelings, or personality. Indeed, for Goffman, the latter can be seen as an asocial part of the self, something foreshadowed in Ichheiser, who claims that the inner personality is always less socialized than the outer personality. Ichheiser (1949) illustrates this with the example of Sally meeting Susan in the street: Sally
hates Susan but upon seeing her, she suppresses her hostility and greets her with a friendly expression. Knowing nothing of Sally’s hostility, Susan takes this at face value, so that Sally’s expression acts as a mask to conceal her actual feelings toward Susan.
The problem here, though, is that the example above, and the thinking behind it, is too simplistic. In the example, the distinction between expression as an internal process and impression as a social one is false because it ignores the ambivalence that is usually present in such scenes that can actually be picked up by those involved. Instead, Ichheiser (1949) appears to assume that the actor’s mask is a successful device that can hide actual “inner” feelings.
A more interesting example may be the opening exchange from a play excerpted from the work of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky (1987). Here, Sophia, a young and attractive woman, is being greeted by Chatskii, an eligible young man and would-be suitor.
Sophia: Oh Chatskii, I am glad to see you.
Chatskii: You’re glad, that’s good. Though, can one who becomes glad in this way be sin- cere? (p. 282).
Clearly, something in the way that Sophia expresses her happiness to see Chatskii gives away her uncertainty or ambivalence at their meeting: perhaps she said these words too cheerfully or perhaps she was hesitant. Chatskii indicates that he has picked up on her confusion by an equally ambivalent response: he lets her know that he wants her to be glad to see him because he really likes her (“You’re glad that’s good”) but that he doubts her sincerity. This captures the complexity in human expression and impression formation, based on words, intonation, looks, gestures, body posture, and even skin coloring, where each of these elements can contradict or call into question the others.
Such communication continues between complex, contradictory, and ambiguous selves who have multifaceted personalities. Saying that she is glad to see Chatskii as she does might suggest that Sophia really does not like him or that he has caught her at an inconvenient time or that she is actually frightened of her powerful sexual desire for him. We cannot tell from this short excerpt. But Chatskii has now formed the impression that Sophia does not like him and sees her as insincere. As Ichheiser correctly says, the image may be distorted, but it is not formed by an external mask hiding inner feelings or the “personality itself”; rather, distorted images have been formed during the relationship and interaction between two complex, ambivalent, and divided selves unsure of the feelings each has for the other.
Ichheiser is right, of course, to say that social conventions such as politeness always modify human expression, but, as seen in the example above, this can often create tensions in people’s feelings that find their way into the expression. To return to the earlier example of Sally greeting Susan, politeness demands that we do not express open dislike of another unless that person has done something that justifies an angry or hostile response—so Sally gives Susan a friendly greeting when, in fact, she really does not like her. But will her friendly expression be the same free and spontaneous one that Merleau-Ponty (1945/2012) thought would happen between
two friends on the street who actually do like each other, or will there be some constraint or ambivalence in the friendly gesture? What Sally is feeling is not dislike on the inside and friendliness on the outside but rather a kind of forced or pretend friendliness that is likely to make her deeply uncomfortable and feeling hypocritical.
Again, the visible and the invisible are not dichotomies that reflect the opposition of outer and inner, but rather subtle gradations in which the invisible can always appear in some shading of the visible, if only in a fleeting moment or in the registering of tension or ambiguity. Given this, it is also possible for someone to see something in our expression that we ourselves had not realized was there at all.
Someone may see that we are nervous, hesitant, or unfriendly before we ourselves have fully realized that we feel this way.
This must also lead us to question Ichheiser’s (1949) view that “our external personality is always and fundamentally more ‘socialized,’ more ‘rational,’ more
‘conventionalized’ than the inner, ‘invisible’ personality’” (p. 9). Why should anger, hostility, shyness, or nervousness be any less socialized than friendliness, kindness, empathy, or confidence? When we are angry or hostile, it is usually because of the nature of our relationship to someone or something or because of a wrong we feel others have done to us. The way we express anger or hostility is as much open to social conditioning as the expression of love or kindness. Indeed, as Wittgenstein (1958) remarked, our expression is never divorced from what we actually feel; we do not feel joy and then express it because our expression of joy—the running, jumping, smiling, or crying—is the experience of joy itself. An emotion or feeling where the expression is suppressed is simply a different experience. If I feel joy because I have just heard some good news about someone close to me yet I cannot express my joy until the news is formally announced to them, I may experience this
“stifled joy” as a form of tension and suspense. But the so-called “inner” joy is no less a social experience than the “outer” joy. In fact, it is misleading to think of outer and inner here, as both experiences of joy are part of different social situations and, as such, are different ways of being in the world.
What I am arguing, then, is that the dichotomies of outer and inner, and of impression and expression, serve to undermine the more radical elements of Ichheiser’s philosophy. These elements have taught us that the human personality is complex and ambiguous and that the tendency to overestimate the unity of personality and to place importance on the “inner” characteristics of individuals above the influence of situations distorts perception of self and others. But this is undermined by Ichheiser’s claim that expression is part of the “inner” processes or mechanisms of what he often refers to as the “personality itself” (1949, p. 9). If the self is complex and ambiguous and can appear and act differently from one situation to another, what is the “personality itself”?
Perhaps this is related to what Ichheiser (1949) refers to as the “real” personality characteristics as opposed to the “pseudo” and the “sham” (p. 54). The “pseudo”
characteristics are those that appear only under the influence of particular situations, while the “sham” are those attributed to the individual by others but that they do not actually possess—they merely appear to have these attributes. In contrast, the “real”
characteristics are those that others perceive that actually are what they appear to be
or are ones that appear independently or nearly independently of the situation in which the person is placed. However, Ichheiser then goes on to state that even
“sham” characteristics can play an important role in personality, in that individuals can adjust themselves to this image, internalizing the image in their own mind, defend themselves against it, or rebel against it completely.
But this instantly creates a problem around what we call “real” in terms of the personality. The revolutionary implication in the thinking of pragmatists like G.H. Mead (1934) about the self is that there is no way in which individuals can obtain an image of their own selves without some interaction with others. For example, one would not consider him-/herself a coward without first interpreting the responses of others to one’s actions in a particular situation. Ichheiser (1949) realizes this and, in response to the work of thinkers like Mead (1934) and Cooley (1922/1983), argues that the “way we are seen by others determines the way we see ourselves. And the way we see ourselves determines essentially how we ‘really’ are, that is, the formation of what we call vaguely personality ‘itself’” (p. 10). This calls into question the use of terms like sham to describe characteristics that we may not believe we actually have because even the attribution of such characteristics will affect our behavior and response to it, along with our view of ourselves in terms of acquiescence, denial, or rebellion against how we are viewed by others.
But, as Ichheiser (1949) says, because this affects us in some way or another, it determines how we “really” are. This is important because it cuts against the trend in contemporary poststructural or postmodern thought to understand the symbolically or discursively constructed images of self as illusion or fiction that has no ontological basis. The ontology that underlies the image is in the relation between people in the world and how the images constructed in interactions between each different person have a real effect on them and their behavior. In this sense, all perception and misperception of self and others are real in that they have consequences for those bound into these interrelationships.
The relationship between image and reality becomes even more complex when we consider that there is no single or unified image that we obtain of ourselves when interacting with others. Instead, a series of conflicting and contradictory images of the self are communicated to us through how others respond to us with looks, words, intonations, and other gestures. The impressions that thus we form of ourselves can then become permanent or semipermanent ambiguous images, characteristics, dispositions to action, or habits. This, however, blurs the lines between outer and inner, expression and impression, and totally calls into question the distinction between real, pseudo, and sham characteristics. The issue that this does raise, however, is one that Ichheiser (1949) does not consider in the work of thinkers like Mead (1934) and Cooley (1922/1983) that focuses on the dialogical or conversational nature of the mind and self. In this approach various images of the self have been communicated to us in the conversation of bodily and vocal gestures with others, but the human processes of thought are also an “inner conversation” between the different images we have of ourselves and between different voices, intonations, inclinations, impulses, feelings, and desires.