Entry 5: Why the Self Is Empty

"... ads sell by convincing the public that a certain product is indispensable to their well-being or by implicitly addressing or exacerbating a personal fear in the consumer that could be reassured or soothed by purchasing the product."

This quote really made me think about what kinds of advertisements I see every day and which ones I think are most effective. I also thought about the advertisements that left an impression on me. I realized that, although this is not true for all ads, it is still a common tactic today. For example, some of my favorite commercials from the past year or two are Allstate's mayhem commercials. The commercial is funny, so most people will remember it, but it is also a reminder to people of what can happen if they do not have proper insurance. The ads all send the same message that the product is necessary if you want to save money on insurance and protect yourself from mayhem.

In "Why the Self is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology," Philip Cushman argues that the modern state exercises control over its citizens through the construction of the current self as empty and fragmented in order to guarantee the constant consumption and ingestion of products, celebrities, and experiences that keep the economy alive. Cushman offers a contextualized study of the self, with particular attention being given toward the shift from the sexually restrictive self of the Victorian era to the 'empty self' of the post-World War II era. The empty self is that which experiences a "significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning," resulting in a self that yearns to consume to compensate for what has been lost. This notion of an empty self was built in relation to the U.S's post-war economy, which is dependent on the continual consumption on non-essential and obsolete items and the individuals "need" for these products. Cushman attributes advertising and psychotherapy as its beneficiaries, as they simultaneously perpetuate and attempt to rid the self of its emptiness.

"...absence feeds these businesses"

This article claims that political and economic manipulation is responsible for a heightened sense of individualism. Individualism leads to living for only yourself thus causing oneself to losing emotional sustenance; no need to care for a family, no need to see past your own world, having a secular personality, etc... People are essentially secluding themselves and thus starving themselves into emptiness. This emptiness presumably, coupled with the political and economic manipulations from the advertising industry, narcissistic culture, and self-improvment industries fuels consumption. This is hard for me to believe. Rather than the absence of self-esteem, values, etc...

I choose to be an individual to have a higher quality of living. The reduction in people living in 7 person houses and increase in single homes doesn't indicate secluded life styles, but rather a higher quality lifestyle. I would like to live in a single home rather than a 7 person home not because I am "empty" but because I prefer individualism. With that said, i want to bring up an interesting point I noticed while reading this. Philip Cushman kept referencing how psychology and all aspects of life is influenced by culture. The author and I obviously have differing views on how to illuminate life because Cushman believes consumption is linked with emptiness whereas I believe it is linked with a deeper aspiration for growth.

"...absence feeds these businesses"

This article claims that political and economic manipulation is responsible for a heightened sense of individualism. Individualism leads to living for only yourself thus causing oneself to losing emotional sustenance; no need to care for a family, no need to see past your own world, having a secular personality, etc... People are essentially secluding themselves and thus starving themselves into emptiness. This emptiness presumably, coupled with the political and economic manipulations from the advertising industry, narcissistic culture, and self-improvment industries fuels consumption. This is hard for me to believe. Rather than the absence of self-esteem, values, etc...

I choose to be an individual to have a higher quality of living. The reduction in people living in 7 person houses and increase in single homes doesn't indicate secluded life styles, but rather a higher quality lifestyle. I would like to live in a single home rather than a 7 person home not because I am "empty" but because I prefer individualism. With that said, i want to bring up an interesting point I noticed while reading this. Philip Cushman kept referencing how psychology and all aspects of life is influenced by culture. The author and I obviously have differing views on how to illuminate life because Cushman believes consumption is linked with emptiness whereas I believe it is linked with a deeper aspiration for growth.

"Why the Self is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology" by Philip Cushman attempts to explain the historical evolution of conception of "the self", and how the current conception of self raises serious questions about modern life. Cushman lays down a broad history of self conception which spans nearly all of human history, and draws on various sources of psychology and philosophy, but the main goal of the article is to reveal the emergence of the empty self following World War II. Cushman seems to agree with our previous course material that following the success of the United States during World War II, the government and private corporations made a conscious effort to keep people spending their money on material goods instead of saving it for their own benefit. Over time this led to increasingly effective methods to get customers to buy products, especially by making them feel empty. Suddenly products that were never before deemed necessary, became so, and advertising increasingly barraged consumers with ads that "implicitly addressed or exacerbated a personal fear in the customer that could be reassured or soothed by purchasing the product" (605). In short, in a world where people were becoming increasingly disconnected from the community, religion, a broad understanding and connection with the world surrounding them, and even the nuclear family, the solution to all of these problems was deemed by advertisers to be "spend, spend, spend"! The more money one spends, the closer one gets to attaining perfection, and therefore happiness. Never mind that attaining perfection is impossible. Never mind that the more material goods we posses, the more likely we are to become dependent on them.

"A good case could be made that many current advertisements (e.g. regarding body odor, hair color, or life insurance) are less a type of benign guidance and more a type of coercive attack." (Pg. 43)

Cushman goes on to reference the ideals that advertisements hold us to: the people that they tell us we should emulate and strive to be. He says that these ads condemn the average consumer and glorify the "model." We are all our own harshest critics already, and by setting impossible standards that we will strive to maintain, advertisements really manipulate people into buying their products. It goes past the already powerful consuming stimulus of "I want to look/be/smell/dress/drive like the person in the commercial." The really effective ones combine this basic idea with a gentle invite to analyze ourselves, pick apart our flaws and try to patch up our holes with products. Cushman's examples demonstrate this well. Deodorant commercials portray smelly people in an office setting, hair color commercials have models with perfect hair to make people feel insecure, and life insurance ads invoke emotion by showing a family that may need more financial help. These make us question ourselves and wonder if whatever we are doing is enough, and often convince us that we would be better off with their products.

“The trend toward waning of Victorian values [...] appeared to have slowed during the economic depression of the 1930s and World War II.”

Cushman is quite negative about the “empty self” our culture has created: the self that can only be momentarily satisfied by consumer products and self-improvement ventures. However, this quote implies the inevitability of the way our society developed.

Wealth and prosperity brought on the new trend toward indulgence instead of restriction in the 1920s, and when that prosperity was stifled during the Depression, indulgence was also stifled. The American people of the 1920s were faced with the freedom that came along with greater industrial efficiency, cheaper food, and shorter workdays. They needed to find ways to fill up the time that was once taken by working and worrying about making ends meet, and they did that with indulgence. Cushman has an underlying message that our culture could have turned out differently, but I do not believe that is true. During the Depression, people were focused solely on their basic needs, but once prosperity returned after WWII, people once again had the means to indulge. America is naturally inclined to be wealthy and prosperous and thus, naturally inclined to require indulgence to fill up the space once occupied by working long hours and making sure food was on the table. Our culture could not likely have become anything other than what it is because of our consistent ability to create, innovate, and progress.

"the current self is constructed as empty...the state controls its population not by restricting the impulses of its citizens as in Victorian times, but by creating and manipulating their wish to be soothed, organized and made cohesive by momentarily filling them up."

I believe this is Cushman's main point because it contrasts the past with the present and how an individuals self-identity is created. In the past your sense of identity was defined by those around you mostly your family and they defined what role you would play. There was not individual freedom to choose due to the social constructs of Victorian society. However in the present we are given so much individual freedom we get to choose every detail of our identity. This is so much freedom that in turn we are overwhelmed by it and look for what we believe we "identify" with. We see hundreds of advertisments everyday as we grow and begin to "mold" our identity we draw from these advertaisments to inform us on what we need to consume in order to fit the criteria of our new found identity. This is what I believe Cushman is connecting between consumerism and self-identity.

"The individual self came to be seen as the ultimate locus of salvation...for this self there are supposed to be no limits to achievement and enjoyment" (p. 41)

I chose this quote because it seems to be increasingly relevant in current society. People are becoming self-dependent and self-reliant; it is clearly evident when families are becoming smaller, parents are choosing to have no kids, marriage is pushed off until late - people are increasingly satisfied with being by themselves. Cushman may be right - that consumerism greatly attributed to the empty self, one that tries to fill itself with things and objects, rather than relationships and families. It's funny how so many people go to the psychologist, when they believe they are unhappy in life. But as Cushman later points out, psychology cannot solve the problem since it can't reach the core historical problem, the problem that created psychology in the first place.

In "Why the Self Is Empty: Toward a Historically Situated Psychology," Philip Cushman goes on to discuss the importance of context and the psychological effects that our respective cultures can cause. Again, this brings me to back to women's sportswear advertisements and the promises of self-empowerment and self-fulfillment, that they make. These advertisements seek to manipulate the consumer into believing that with their products, a better self can be achieved. With that idea, these advertisements do not acknowledge the contexts and backgrounds in which individuals come from, particularly the working class. In addition, our society as a whole does not take the context of things into consideration. For instance, racism is still an operating force today and in order to see how it subtly affects us, the history and context of our generation and the previous generation must be understood.

"the current self is constructed as empty, and as a result the state controls its population not by restricting the impulses of its citizens, as in Victorian times, but by creating and manipulating their wish to be soothed, organized, and made cohesive by momentarily filling them up" (600).

This is an important argument that Philip Cushman is making because it literally effects everything. The fact the we see ourselves as free individuals but maybe we are not as free as we think we are is an argument worth acknowledgment. From the beginning of our lives we are constructed as empty so that we feel the need to seek more of something. Cushman gives examples of experiences that we use to try to become less empty, such as, "consuming goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists". This is interesting because I am guilty of seeking all of those things and I don't think very many people can say that they are not. This shows that the sense of emptiness that we feel has a profound effect on the way we live our lives.

"Ads seem to criticize and condemn the average consumer while glorifying the model, extolling a standard of beauty and mastery impossible to achieve."

This quote is significant to me because I feel that all the ads shown are too much for the public in a way that some people can go insane if that's all they watched. I have noticed that the commercials during television shows are shown louder just to make sure to get the attention of the audience. And the ads are full of materialistic things that people are made believe they need to have. It's amazing how now even the little kids are highly affected by all the commercials and ads that they see. I remember recently I was baby sitting my 6 year old niece and she was telling me how she cannot wait until she is allowed to wear make up, after I heard that I was in shock, the girl was only 6 years old and talking about how she wants to be the "perfect woman" that is advertised all around. The ads are pushing the society to becoming less individualistic and more similar to one another.

"Psychotherapy appears to be less a 'scientific' cure and more a covert vehicle for cultural guidance and transmission. Individuals in the postmodern era, without a cohesive community, are struggling to find sense and meaning in a confusing world"
This quotation is important because it not only questions the purpose of psychologists but implicitly asks how can an individual in our society be called crazy if the society as a whole is working in absurdity. I liked how the author called psychologists guidance counselors instead of scientist. Our contemporary society really lacks a standard set of mannerisms and traditions, which ultimately makes things far more complicated. We don't many of the times, have standard notions to act with friends, dates, even family. It's interesting how loosing community can mean loosing much more than the definition entails, it means loosing our purpose of living.

"Inner emptiness may be expressed in many ways, such as low self-esteem (the absence of a sense of personal worth), values confusion (the absence of a sense of personal convictions), eating disorders (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with food, or to embody the emptiness by refusing food), drug abuse (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with chemically induced emotional experiences), and chronic consumerism (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with consumer items and the experience of "receiving" something from the world)."

I laughed when I read this quote, and not because I did not believe, but because it sounds as if it's straight out of a pharmaceutical commercial advertising their latest prescription drug with all of its potential side-effects. I wonder if drug companies would actually allow "inner emptiness" as a reason for using one of their drugs? In all seriousness though, Cushman's article brings up an array of valid reasons and explanations as to why the emergence of the "empty self" has everything to do with historical, economic, and political contexts. Those who reject this idea, like many other psychotherapists and researchers that Cushman mentions, have failed to understand that the field of psychology itself needs to accept that its theories are flawed.

"...impressing others and gaining their approval became an important aim in life, far outstripping the value of doing the morally correct act." (p.40)

This quote was interesting to me because it highlights the insecurities and low self esteem we as humans have that advertisements/advertisers target. We constantly seek approval from others, and not only does this bear weight on our desire for material possessions to create a physical image for ourselves (which reminded me of Stern's article on consumerism that we read), but it also allows for advertisers and companies to tell us we need something that we really don't need. This leads to the notion of the empty self and psychotherapy. Advertising tells us there is something wrong with us by suggesting that a certain model's lifestyle is better, so we seek to "merge" with that particular lifestyle, as Cushman describes in detail in the article. I think that the basic argument that Cushman is trying to hit home with is that psychology is ultimately used to further consumerism. It isn't always necessarily used to manipulate everyone, but through the claims Cushman makes about psychotherapy and the configuration of the self, it is more frequently used against us as consumers to better ourselves and fulfill the 'empty self'.

In this article, Cushman describes the effects of consumerism on society and the idea of identity, and the changes that have evolved because of such. One quote that really stuck with me stated, “At the same time there has been a shift from a savings to a debtor economy.” Perhaps this quote stuck with me because it is simple relative to other concepts that Cushman discusses, regardless, I immediately started thinking about how relevant “debt” is in the status quo - you see and hear about debt and it’s effects in every aspect of life. From education and budget cuts to real estate and foreclosures, the consequences of the consumerist and credit/debt mentality has evolved to getting something for nothing, and society is finally seeing the backlash and consequences of such mentality. I hear about fellow students that are graduating not only with thousands in student loans, but furthermore, thousands racked up on credit loans, of which they cannot even begin to describe what they have to show for such enormous expenditures. Our fiscal irresponsibility as a nation and consumer has gotten completely out of hand, and hopefully future generations will learn from our current mistakes financially.

This article traces the progression of the "self" from the Victorian era until today, and shows how this progression has led to the current state of "the empty self". The primary change has been from the idea of the self as a piece in a larger system (during Victorian times) to the idea today that the individual is something that needs to be developed and fulfilled. However, since we have lost much of the sense of belonging to a bigger picture, something that came from large families, farm labor, and religion, our sense of fulfillment is now derived from consumption. "It is a self that seeks the experience of being continually filled up by consuming goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathic therapists in an attempt to combat the growing alienation and fragmentation of its era".

"Humans do not have a basic, fundamental, pure human nature that is transhistorical and transcultural...Culture "completes" humans by explaining and interpreting the world, helping them to focus their attention on or ignore certain aspects of the environment."

I think that this quote really embraces the main point that the author is trying to reach in demonstrating that the self is empty. In that we are formed by the view of the world that our society instigates upon us, we are the products of our economy, politics, and ideology of our community. In the case of the U.S, our capitalist economy tells us to be consumers and this is why our self is considered empty. Our consumer culture is not defined by the actual clothes we wear, movies we produce, or events that we attend w/in our culture, but rather the hidden symbols that each one of these cultural objects represents sub-conciously to ourselves. We are the products of our culture, not the actual material objects that our society produces. A culture, as I would define it, is a web of symbolic meanings, that we understand only in our subconscious. These symbols are exactly what Physcologists and advertisers understand and manipulate so that they can control/manipulate our population.

"The thesis of this article is that the current self is constructed as empty, and as a result the state controls its population not by restricting the impulses of its citizens, as in Victorian times, but by creating and manipulating their wish to be soothed, organized, and made cohesive by momentarily filling them up."
This quote really hit the article home for me, because it is absolutely the case (in my opinion.) I am brought by to "The Story of Stuff" video that we watched in class awhile ago. We are caught up in this vicious cycle where advertisements and societal pressures tell us the things that are "wrong" with us, we attempt to fix these things through consumption, and we are satisfied until we are told the next thing that is "wrong" with us and so and and so forth. It's actually a bit disheartening when you really think about it.