Who Am I?: Exploring Identity through Sexuality, Politics and Art, 1e

Gonzalez-Torres
Karnac Books Limited
304 pages
ISBN: 9781800132238
October 2024

Identity as a concept does not appear in psychoanalysis until the work of Erik Erikson in the 1950s, but today it is considered a key factor in understanding individuals and groups. It is a concept of enormous complexity, encompassing biological aspects, internalised object representations that determine the inner world of the subject, and relational aspects in the real world. Answering the question, 'Who am I really?' is a task that can span a lifetime. Constructing one's own identity involves social, cognitive-rational, and unconscious processes. These elements underpin the answer to this question and its corollary, 'What is my value?' As we move from looking at individuals in isolation to looking at groups, we are also confronted with processes of identity construction and repair - this time group identities - through movements in which sexuality and its expression in the group play a major role.