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\author{David Golombek}
\title{A Little Social Saturation and a Changing Self;\\
New ways of looking at what's already happened to you.}
\date{\today}
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\maketitle
Despite being from the same book, the two chapters of \underline{The
Saturated Self} by Kenneth Gergen are very diferent in tone.  He is an
excellent writer, and both are technically very well written.  It
seems that the author spent much more time reworking chapter three,
"Social Saturation and the Populated Self", while forgetting to clean
up his arguments in chapter six, "From Self to Relationship".  The
arguments in chapter three are so well backed up and clearly presented
that her (few) opinions in the chapter flow so well as to be almost
unquestionable.  On the flip side, the arguments in chapter 6 are not
cohesive, do not flow well, and ask one to disagree with them.

Chapter three is devoted to explaining the new meaning of multiphrenia
in modern society.  He defines this as "the splitting of the
individual into a multiplicity of self-investments."  Using many
examples from everyday life, he brings this seemingly abstract concept
into a seemingly good description for what is happening to us in the
real world.  He attributes the change in status of multiphrenia, from
its classification as a mental illness to a normal way of coping with
change, to the rapid rise of so many diferent communication mediums.

On first read through of this chapter, I found myself automatically
agreeing with almost everything the author presented.  None of the
points he makes are very radical, and indeed most of them are ones
that we have already discussed in class.  However, even without such
prior discussion, I would have agreed with his arguments rather
quickly.  However, upon a second reading, I found that much of his
logic is based upon eloquent prose rather than carefully built up
logic.  The main thesis of the chapter is that as communication
technology increases in usability and power, people are exposed to
more information, and the cultural content of that information
overwhelms our defenses and changes our own self-image.  Although many
single examples are given in the chapter as to people who have indeed
changed their self-image in response to such stimuli, I found no
explanation that this must be the overriding trend.  

My disagreement is based upon my experience in the corporate world,
where many users of online services view them as mere databases.
Despite many years of use in some cases, many of these people simply
force the data coming in from the new mediums into their existing
patterns, despite the loss of data inherent in this approach.
Although my experience has only been with middle-age people exhibiting
this characteristic, I can easily see youths growing up in
restricitive households following their parents in this respect.
This argument doesn't scale well beyond a limited portion of the
population, but it definitely raises questions about the inevitability
that Gergen seems to assume about this trend towards multiphrenia.

I had many more objections to the assumptions of the sixth chapter.
Surprisingly though, my objections come about how Gergen reaches his
conclusion, while I agree in full about the full conclusion.  His
thesis is that all firm descriptions of "self" have been destroyed by
modern culture, and that new descriptions must be reached via
relationships to other objects (and may differ depending upon those
objects).  I have defined myself via this method for quite a while,
yet several of the examples Gergen uses in his argument seem very
hollow to me.  

One particular example that struck me as wrong was the extended
discussion on presidential politics.  Gergen states "As we move into
the postmodern era, however, interest in 'true character' and disgust
with 'false advertising' diminish."  Given the level of discussion and
worry surrounding President Clinton's "use" of pot during the last
presidential election, I would argue that interest in the true
background and character of politicians is increasing.  This may be
related to the negative add campaigns so popular in modern elections,
but it is none the less still a strong trend.  

In another place, Gergen contradicts himself.  He states that "We are
generally prepared to accept as 'true' only those life stories that
conform to existing conventions."  Yet in chapter three, he spent a
large section describing how via the new communication technologies,
we are daily introduced to new lives and cultures (he mentions
neo-nazis and transexuals among others) that are foreign to us, and we
assimilate these new ideas into our subconscious.  If these life
stories don't conform to existing conventions, I'm not certain what
don't, making his argument rather weak.

Despite these quibbles, I agree with the author's final point of
chapter six, in that in this postmodern age, our Self depends upon who
we are with, and what we are doing.  Technology and culture push us
into so many different situations daily that it is frequently
difficult or undesirable to present the same face to all of them.  We
create personalities to deal with these new situations, and switch
between these facades as we move between different groups.  As we've
discussed in class, sometimes this results from a conscious decision,
sometime through unavoidable circumstance, but it seems to happen to
enough people that to be related to the new technologies.

Gergen's excellent writing style covers up several weaknesses in
logic, but other than these few minor gaps, his overall points are
strong.  Most of what he's said has been discussed in class before,
and thus doesn't open up major new avenues of discussion, but his
ideas are well thought out, and clearly explain some of the concepts
that we've been struggling with in class.

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