There are a lot of definitions and perspective about what is the ‘self’, but then a broader

description is that it connects us to the material and immaterial world. Socrates as one of the
philosophers believes in the idea of duality, which means that ‘self’ are composed of body and
soul. Our body is imperfect because it is always changing, while our soul is perfect because it
remain the same. The ideas of geniuses in this field are incomparable but here is our own
theory of the self.

Self works in a Reverse Psychology

The self works in a reverse psychology. The person that we are today is not actually the
person that we wanted to be in the future. Human person is a slave of endless rules and
protocols of society. We commanded ourselves to stay what we really should be but there is a
gravity that pulls us to meet the standards. What others want us to do contradict to what we
want to do. We are living in a world wherein we try to fit into the system of social standard.
Given the fact that as an individual we wanted to be a better person, we set goals and do
whatever it takes to accomplish it. Like for instance, in a classroom wherein personal growth
happens; a student must study very hard and do the requirements to be submitted on time but
because we see others having fun we are forced to be one of them. So it literally means, we do
the opposite thing, we somehow forgot the goal which is to study hard.

We are all a prisoner of social dilemma; we work and act based on the standard put by
the society. There is certain protocol that needs to be followed and rules in order to become
part of that organization. The society established a standard wherein everyone must abide. In
reality, we wanted to do a lot of things in life but because of how the world works we are afraid
to, we tend choose to become part of majority.

The self and its consciousness allow us to create our true identity but how can we do it
when all the people who surrounds us put labels that limit ourselves. We cannot find the real
meaning of the self if we are being manipulated by the society. The ability that we have within
us sometimes never shows off because we are putting ourselves in a box and we somehow
afraid to go out in that box. Ironically, the box represents the systematic way of living. This idea
imprisons us always to extent that we losses ourselves in the process of trying to fit in into that
practices. The big question here is; are we going to change to fit into the system or is the
system needs to change so we can all fit in? Self is still being identifiable if a person itself
focuses to the norms and ideas of the public.

Reverse Psychology works almost in every aspect of ourselves, of our true self. It works
because we a allow it to happened every single minute that we go out in public. Imagine that a
football player standing at the centre of a big stadium; he was surrounded by thousands of
people. All he needs to do is to prove to him that he is a great player at that particular sport,
but none of those crowds are aware of it. So as his goal became so vivid in his action what he
should probably do is to play hard. In reality, it’s not only himself who drives his eagerness to
win but also the crowd. In real life situation, even when do great things in life we’re still
enclosed in the idea of trying.

So much of our own happiness depends on how we choose to look at the world. The
self will never be defined by individuals if they rather choose to see the world based on how the
people see it.

Also, we are afraid to be judge by others that is why we do things in contrary to what we
supposed to do, that’s the ‘self’ works in a reverse psychology.

The Déjà vu Self

When sometimes we felt like certain thing happened before our real ‘self’ thought that
we already know how to deal with it. In our first try we feel familiarity leaving questions that
entails some remarks on how we felt that kind of familiarity to the things that we didn’t try
before. It supports the idea of John Locke that before we experience things we already have
knowledge about it. The figure that connects our knowledge to our self is governed by our
experiences that are why sometimes we are confused whether a particular scenario in our life
already happened before.

There are circumstances in our life that we are trapped in a situation where we already
know what to do even though it is our first time encountering that situation.

The idea that the ‘self’ worked in a reverse psychology and that is it is a déjà vu is
indeed debatable but one thing that we agreed on is that the ‘self’ is always and will always be
under construction.