linked with self-expression. Such decisions need to be integrated into a person’s sense of being to dissipate feelings of dissonance, which are a natural part of decision-making. Fragmentation arises when the decision that is made is out of keeping with various factors including social norms and cultural predispositions, as well as the sense of who we are versus what we feel is expected of us. As such, the self may be described as [...] a unit, cohesive in space and enduring in time, which is a centre of initiative and a recipient of impressions (Kohut, 1977 cited in Ornstein, 1991: 452) Our beliefs and desires are an intrinsic part of our sense of self and affect the way in which others perceive us. These aspects may take the form of both conscious and unconscious intentions that are transformed into thoughts, actions and behaviours. Importantly, these drives are mediated by psychological factors that are both socially contingent and culturally dependent. For example, The Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 proved that attributing particular roles within a given social framework predisposed the individual to thinking and behaving in ways specific to that role. Through dividing a group of students into two groups – ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ – the researchers found that those in the ‘guard’ role became sadistic whilst those in the ‘prisoner’ role became withdrawn and depressed. This kind of ‘social herding’ suggests that we may not have so much choice in matters as we might reasonably assume. Included within this framework are ways of behaving that conform to social appropriateness, which in certain settings relieves feelings of vulnerability. In other settings, ‘standing out from the crowd’ may be actively encouraged and viewed as a natural part of selfexpression. Whatever the overall cultural trend, those immersed within any dominant social ideology experience ‘accepted’ conventions as unconscious and invisible, and to a large degree, unquestionable aspects of everyday life. These paradigms inform the choices we make, even when we are aware that they are disparate from those decisions that feel ‘right’ to us on an individual level. As Markus states: [...] what appears as the all-important choice can be found in most cultural contexts, but the
significance and consequence of selecting one alternative over another depends on the set of cultural understandings and habitual practices that come bundled with this action (Markus, 2003: 281) The idea that art communicates interior subjective experience is nothing new. In The Captive Mind (1953), Miłosz provides a personal/ historical account of his own experience of inner dissonance provoked by his role as an underground writer in Poland following World War II. Miłosz details the interior conflict he felt having to pander to the dictates of governmental policies whist secretly harbouring a personal defiance against the communist regime. The book brings the notion of freedom of choice into sharp focus, where the schism between the conscious and unconscious mind is illustrated as the conflict between what is felt on a personal level and what is deemed socially acceptable. We might say that Miłosz was acting in what Satre defines as ‘bad faith’, a kind of feigned sincerity that does not necessarily acknowledge the selfmotivated origins of his actions (Satre, 1943). In contrast to Miłosz, Renata Adler’s Pitch Dark (1984) explores the contradictory and often ambiguous nature of the self. Through a fictional account of the character’s internal dialogue, Adler voices thoughts and emotions as a kind of conversation between disparate aspects of the self, in which no immediate resolution between the various fragmented parts is given. She analyses the character’s romantic relationship from the standpoint of things which are left unsaid but rather understood through body language and through reference to self-experience. Through this analogy, Adler provides a portrait of a woman who is the victim of her own thoughts, hounded by an internal dialogue that spirals uncontrollably into believing things which don’t really exist. These two accounts of interior experience provide ways of understanding how the self interacts with the exterior environment and explores how a comprehension of others might arise as a consequence of self-reference. However, they also confirm the presence of dissonant and often contradictory viewpoints within the mind that affirm the fragmentary nature of the self. Indeed, they allude to the notion that a ‘sense-of self’ is not so much a fixed agency but rather a continually renewable and ever-changing state of being.