If you scroll through the average Instagram user’s account, you will undoubtedly see an endless parade of photographs featuring fancy drinks, delectable food, serene nature walks, yoga poses, and various other images of the user living her best life. People appear to use their Instagram accounts to project an image of themselves as successful (“Look at all of these things I can afford to do!”), adventurous (“Look at all these interesting places I go to!”), and healthy (“Look at how often I exercise!”). At its worst, Instagram seems to be a place of vapid self-aggrandizement, where people desperately trying to show themselves to be something that they are not, all the while providing others with the opportunity to supply them with the attention that they so deeply crave. How different are these people of the modern era wasting away, enraptured by their personal screens, from our dear mythological ancestor Narcissus, who perished from starvation because he could not pull himself away from his own reflection in a pool.
But this view of the Age of Instagram is inaccurate. It is easy to see negative sides of humanity in the actions of others and chalk it up to dispositional flaws, but let us not confuse what is easy for what is right. Participation in selfie culture is not an act of vanity, but rather an attempt deeply rooted in human psychology to change oneself for the better. Rather than a deleterious shout into the void of superficiality, the Age of Instagram may reflect our need to synthesize various aspects of the self into something congruous and optimal.
Noted psychologist and humanist Carl Rogers wrote extensively on the human condition and its relationship to growth and development. Rogers believed that humans exhibit what he called an “Organismic Valuing Process,” according to which we pursue experiences which help us grow and develop and avoid those that are destructive to the self. The ultimate motivational force, then, for humans is growth and self-actualization. According to Rogerian humanism there are three aspects of the self: (1) the ideal self, that best person we can be; (2) the true self, who we actually are; (3) and the self-image, how we view ourselves. These three aspects of the self are like images that can overlap or fail to overlap. A completely congruous self is someone for whom there is no discrepancy between these three aspects of the self: The true self is the same as the ideal self, and one is able to see himself as such. An incongruous self occurs when one or more aspects of the self do not overlap (or overlap very little), such as having an ideal self that is different from who you are.
It is possible to view all three aspects of the Rogerian self at play in the Age of Instagram. The person creating, editing, and posting a photograph of himself is the actual self, the self as is. The photograph itself is a manifestation of the ideal self, which the actual self wishes he can be. And self-image is what, if anything, is done to take the photograph, such as posing with a selfie stick, and what is done to the photograph once it is taken, such as posting on Instagram. For example, you take a picture of food you do not normally eat, perhaps at an expensive restaurant you can only afford on special occasions. This action shows that the true self identifies a manifestation of the ideal self (one that can afford to enjoy such luxuries) and decides to capture this manifestation with a photograph. Any editing of a photograph such as air-brushing away wrinkles or slimming a waist-line hints at a greater disparity between the actual self and the ideal self.
Is the Instagram user’s attempt to remake himself in vain? Is he doomed to an incongruous form of self? A Rogerian psychologist might recommend some form of psychotherapy so that the person may find happiness in their actual self, or find ways to close the gap between the ideal self and the true self through growth and development. But we need not accept such a negative diagnosis of the Instagrammer.
Within the early chapters of Truth and Method, a treatise on the development of a notion of truth appropriate for the humanities, Hans-Georg Gadamer suggests, in his analysis of aesthetics, a different way to think about the problem. He claims that the act of picturing something, the act of creating an image of an object or person, changes the object or person. For example, he writes, “[I]t is only through being pictured that the landscape becomes picturesque.” This notion does not directly suggest that the physical landscape, or the Instagrammer in our case, is changed by the mere photographing of themselves. Instead, what changes as a result of being pictured is an aspect of the aesthetic object that exists in the space between the aesthetic object and the viewer of the photograph.
How does this apply to the Instagrammer? The photograph may serve as a manifestation of the ideal self, and so in being pictured, the distance between this ideal self and the true self may be lessened. If you posts pictures of yourself enjoying fancy cocktails or going on nature walks, those who follow you and live near you are bound to change their perception of you in such a way that they believe you enjoy engaging in these activities and do so frequently, opening the possibility for them to invite you to do these activities with them. In projecting an image of the ideal self, others may begin to treat you in congruence with that ideal self, thus affecting your self-image and creating a more congruous self.
This sort of “speaking into existence” of a future conception of the ideal self is not the only way in which the more incongruous aspects of the self may be synthesized. The hermeneutic understanding of the self posits that it is constituted historically. In this sense, the Instagram posts, as manifestations of the ideal self, may in fact achieve a certain degree of synthesis with the actual, or present self. Therefore, the act of creating and cultivating manifestations of the future self aids in the fusion, or synthesis, of the actual self and the future self.
If users are carefully curating their profiles and finding ways to connect with others via the platform and to develop personal relationships in which they may continue to grow and develop, then this may indeed mediate some of the more pernicious aspects of social media use. Intentionally and purposefully, users may be able to fashion their social media usage into a process of psychological healing and ego synthesis rather than falling prey to the thoughtlessness which so easily invades the consumers of modern media.
So perhaps the world’s one billion Instagram users are not narcissistically filling up the space of the internet with images of themselves, but rather actively engaging in behaviors that have the possibility of creating congruity between aspects of their self. One billion users are drawn to a venue by which they can begin the process of growth and development, creating a happier and healthier existence. One billion users creating manifestations of the self as something which is essentially temporal, uniting their present selves with that which they have yet to become.
Editor’s note: This article received honorable mention in the APA Blog’s first Public Philosophy Award for Undergraduates contest.
Zacaria Manning
Zacaria Manning recently graduated from Nazareth College of Rochester with a degree in philosophy and psychology. He will soon be attending the University at Buffalo School of Law and School of Graduate Studies in pursual of his Juris Doctorate and master’s degree in philosophy. His research interests tend to focus on contemporary continental German philosophy, philosophical hermeneutics, existentialism, and psychoanalytical theories of personality and development.
