Secret Self Research Articles

Empowering the Literary Essay: Cynthia Ozick and the Search for Authority

Abstract The nonfiction of Cynthia Ozick includes many surrogate father figures, including Henry James, T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling, and Elie Wiesel. These towering presences have been refashioned by Ozick in what she calls her “literary essays,” which she regards as a model of unrestrained creativity as championed by James. Ozick characterizes the literary essay as a gendered “secret self,” with a unique persuasive power, which she depicts as an extension of her novel writing. Many of Ozick’s essays return these male authority figures to a time when they were unknown, humiliated, and impoverished so that she can encounter them as equals, given her own rejection as a Jewish woman writer in the 1950s and ’60s. But Ozick’s nonfiction also includes didactic essays that engage with particular topics or events and do completely different kinds of work when compared to their literary counterparts. The tension between these two modes of nonfiction is explored with reference to these father figures, and especially to the Holocaust, which exposes, for Ozick, the limits of the literary essay.

Secret Selves: A History of Our Inner Space. By Stephen Prickett

Secret Selves: A History of Our Inner Space. By Stephen Prickett

“Images of the Secret Self”: The Idea of the Non-Human in German Expressionist and Early American Horror Cinema

In historian Leslie Fiedler’s book “Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self” (1978), he argues that monsters are intriguing for us because we look at them as mirrors of ourselves. Although the fantasy of manipulating nature emerged centuries ago, Germany’s Expressionist silent cinema had its own place and message for using monsters. In the post-First World War climate, characters such as Cesare in Robert Wiene’s Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Wegener and Carl Boese’s golem (1920), and Fritz Lang’s pseudo-Maria (1927) are all reflections of the era’s political situation. Meanwhile in the US, genetic imagery was a known and popular topic and movies like Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale were inspired by the German works. It also sums up the cultural, ethical, and moral issues of the 1920s, which are still valid today. Although the cultural environments of the two countries are different, they both make use of the same concept in order to show greed for power: the concept of the non-human.

POSTHUMAN IN A SECRET S/P(L)ACE

In this article posthumanistic aspects of the problem of secret s/p(l)ace, i. e. both spaces and place were researched. Differentiation of a space and a place, a secret and a mystery was made. A manifold of a conception of secrecy (mysteriousness, veiling, ciphered, etc.) from a tendency to keep a secret of s/p(l)ace carefully to claim to demystify a place completely is investigated. Philosophy, philosophical anthropology especially, appears as geophilosophy, human geography in this case. Thus a conceptualizing human being is surveying in a friendship with a landscape, s/p(l)ace. The importance of natural elements (water, air, fire, etc.) for secret s/p(l)ace has been demonstrated. Of particular actuality to this study is the appeal to the current concept of the atmosphere, which is weakly perceptible, but is influential. The relationship between a secret s/p(l)ace and a secret self, such as a freak, Secret Santa, etc., was traced. A distinction is made between a secret s/p(l)ace and a non-place like moving place with a discourse, place of surveying. The importance of a secret s/p(l)ace for the formation of a post-body in a situation where the body as such is lost is shown. The importance of psychoanalytic and psychogeographic conceptualization of a secret s/p(l)ace is also demonstrated. They are adjoined by the consideration of space concerning boredom as stabilization of pleasure in the habitual and comfortable, good banality, a bliss from the side of pleasure. The significance of the secret s/p(l)ace is asserted in conditions when the city plays not only a conjunctive, connecting, but also a disjunctive, disconnecting role. A conclusion is made about a secret s/p(l)ace as a posthuman place of a place, a place-without-place with a secret of mystery. The study was carried out on the material of actual culture (literature, cinema, architecture, and design, etc.), as well as life practices. This corresponds to the Deleuzian statement about the intersection of concept, prospectus and affect. The study also involved speculative realism, speculative posthumanism, and other related conceptions.

Dress, the Senses, and Public, Private, and Secret Selves 1

Dress, the Senses, and Public, Private, and Secret Selves focuses on the senses related to dressing the self, taking into account not only the visual aspects of dress, but the other four senses: touch, sound, scent, and taste. The article connects the senses of dress to the idea of dress for the public, private, and secret selves, providing cross-cultural examples, and concludes by relating the senses of dress to the three selves. By relating all five senses to dress for the three selves, we gain a more complete picture of dress across cultures, as individuals clothe, coif, perfume, or accessorize themselves each day for different settings and occasions.

'Wear your identity': Styling identities of youth through dress – A conceptual model

Abstract This article exposes how young people use dress to negotiate, articulate and display identity. A diverse group of young people from Manchester, England, were asked to style themselves using items of clothing, or artefacts, which represented their individual and civic identities. Responses to this styling workshop and the accompanying interviews confirmed the powerful part that dressing can play, as young people navigate different cultural contexts and social environments in their everyday life. The research brings new insights into how dress is used as a catalyst for self-awareness, communication and development of self within multicultural urban settings. It proposes a new model for Dress, Youth and Identity (DYI) that provides a structure onto which young peoples' narratives of dress can be mapped and analysed, building upon the model for Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self (PPSS) proposed by Eicher and Miller.

The Secret Self: ‘Literary’ women-only short story anthologies and the modernist paradigm

Abstract Identity-themed short story anthologies are a technology that has been particularly impactful in the development and transmission of short stories since the 1980s. By associating the short form to critical discourses of identity formation, these often overlooked publications have been, and continue to be, key in granting commercial success and academic consideration to the genre. One of the most fruitful relationships these anthologies have exploited is the one between short stories and female identity, grounded on a theoretical tradition connecting ‘minor’ forms with women writers. This article explores how a certain kind of gender-themed short story anthologies perform this association. Through focus on the exemplary case of Hermione Lee’s three-volume anthology The Secret Self, it argues that so-called ‘literary’ or ‘general’ anthologies typically establish a connection between the notion of ‘woman’ and the short form through the undeclared lens of modernism. Realizing this, it proposes and opens up a space for re-evaluating the cultural role that these texts play in our society.

Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self Model during emerging adulthood

Abstract This research is a new application of Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self (PPSS) Model. From a symbolic interaction theory approach, dress and parts of the self were developed in 1981 and expanded in 1994 from three categories to nine. According to the literature, adolescents use dress in two cells of the PPSS Model while older adults use dress in nine cells. To find out whether there is a different stage of dress between adolescence and older adulthood, this research uses the concept of emerging adulthood (18–25 years) to test the use of dress and levels of the self. A quantitative scale was developed for this purpose since none were found in the literature. A total of 351 questionnaires were analysed and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) ensured the validity of the measure. Data analyses included test of within-subjects effects, a paired sample t-test, mean differences and an independent t-test. Findings from 261 surveys from respondents 18–25 years of age indicate that this sample experienced six cells at an average to above-average level of experience, supporting the hypothesis that differences among age groups on dress and PPSS could result from a maturation process. Implications are discussed for further research.

Peace, Isolation, Purity. Salvation and its Antithesis in Katherine Dunn's Geek Love

This paper investigates how salvage and its antithesis are linked to the promise of salvation in Katherine Dunn's novel Geek Love by looking at the dynamics of social interaction forming normative as well as non-normative identities in the sideshow setting of the novel. The consent to give up and eradicate the Self when faced with internal dilemma and the promise of salvation, as it is depicted in Geek Love, rewrites Freudian and Jungian notions of group psychology, theology, and cult experiences. The processes which lead to the freak being treated as the ‘holy grotesque’ and the ‘Secret Self’ are analysed to show how the character Arty's motto ‘Peace, Isolation, Purity’ promises a kind of salvation from the Self and the burden of normalcy, which nonetheless ultimately leads to non-salvation.

An Elephant in the Consulting Room: Making Space for a Patient's Secret

ABSTRACTDeveloping a private self is required for healthy development to proceed during childhood. However, when secrecy becomes a way of life, development becomes derailed. Secretiveness crowds out privacy during this critical phase of development for many reasons and the result is a secret self. This articles examines secrecy as an adaptive way to avoid shame, manage isolation, and hold onto the threads of identity, allowing for the preservation of a self. It also examines the ways in which secrecy creates emotional distance and prevents intimacy. To illustrate these ideas, I present my work with a patient who developed a secret self and came to treatment with a secret he has yet to reveal. Known between the therapist and patient as “the elephant in the room,” the secret became and remained central to the work and the therapeutic relationship.

Linking Dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self model to coming out

Abstract This theoretical article examines how dress and the Public, Private and Secret Self (PPSS) model is linked to the coming-out models of LGBTI individuals, specifically gay men. The PPSS model is a taxonomy for categorizing dress based on social situation (reality, fun/leisure, fantasy) and the level of self-expression (public, private, secret). Coming-out models are developmental stages of expressing one’s sexual orientation, otherwise known as ‘coming out of the closet’. By examining existing academic literature on gay men and comparing coming-out models with the PPSS model, we posit two directions that link the two models.

The Rebirth of Secrets and the New Care of the Self in Depressed Japan

Until recently in Japan, mental health issues have been carefully guarded as personal and family secrets. In 2014, however, the government passed a revision of the Labor Safety Hygiene Law and institutionalized “stress checks” for workers across the nation. This mental health screening was installed as a response to the high number of depressed and suicidal workers in a country plagued by recession since the 1990s. The screening was also prompted by a grassroots movement that helped establish state and corporate responsibility for protecting workers’ mental health. These changes have initiated a web of corporate surveillance practices, pressuring workers to self-disclose, turning their psychology into a new object of rehabilitation and resilience training. At the same time, there are signs of the emergence of therapeutic spaces where psychiatrists and workers explore new forms of silence and ways of retaining a sense of a private, secret self, thereby enabling a “rebirth of secrets.” By investigating the rise of depression as a workplace psychopathology and emerging forms of “care of the self,” I ask what happens to people’s subjectivities when their minds and bodies become the repository of valuable secrets.

‘I just don't think I look right in a lot of modern clothes … ’: historically inspired dress as leisure dress

This study examined the motivations and dress practices of individuals who wear what appear to be historical styles of costume or historically inspired dress in settings that do not require wearing them. Qualitative case studies were conducted and analysed using Colaizzi's method of phenomenological analysis [Edward, Karen-Leigh, and Tony Welch. 2011. “The Extension of Colaizzi's Method of Phenomenological Enquiry.” Contemporary Nurse 39 (2): 163–171]. By applying historically inspired dress to Eicher and Miller's [1994. “Dress and the Public, Private, and Secret self: Revisiting a Model.” In Proceedings of the International Textile and Apparel Association, Inc., 145. Minneapolis, MN.] Public, Private, and Secret Self (PPSS) Model, as presented by Miller-Spillman and Lee [2014. “Female Civil War Reenactors’ Dress and Magic Moments.” In Fashion, Design and Events, edited by Kim Williams, Jennifer Laing, and Warwick Frost, 69–83. Abingdon: Routledge], we found that motivations for wearing this type of dress in settings where costume was not required (leisure and reality settings) were similar to those in which costume was required (fantasy settings). Additionally, while some motivations were limited to some settings, some were salient across multiple settings, while others were salient across all settings studied. We also uncovered new motivations, such as feelings of social permission, desiring an ideal body shape or flattering figure, and expressing ideologies and/or world views not previously reported by the model [Miller-Spillman, Kimberly, and Min-Young Lee. 2014. “Female Civil War Reenactors’ Dress and Magic Moments.” In Fashion, Design and Events, edited by Kim Williams, Jennifer Laing, and Warwick Frost, 69–83. Abingdon: Routledge]. This study contributes to understandings of the relationship between dress and leisure because we found that the practice of editing plays an important role in distinguishing leisure dress from fantasy dress, a concept not currently recognized by the PPSS model.

Memory work

Like individuals, communities maintain records of their self-definition, creativity, constructions of the past and the future, and experiences of suffering – either in texts or in memories. However, there are domains that the textual cannot enter. These domains remain mnemonic or memory-driven and cover some of our intimate relationships, private hatreds, traumatic or life-altering experiences, dreams and encounters with the sacred. These memories constitute a secret self in all cultures, but some cultures are entirely mnemonic. They usually occupy no space in our knowledge systems and in our visions of the future and survive as inaudible stories of human potentialities and creativity, suffering, exploitation and violence. Following Freud's idea of dream work, one can call the vicissitudes of collective memory, its “distortions,” condensations and “secondary elaborations,” memory work. The memory of the world has been diminished by the dismissive attitude towards the memory banks of the silenced and the marginalized, which survive outside the known world of knowledge or in its interstices. These dismissed memories wait for appropriate moments to return as a form of resistance, to outmanoeuvre the certitudes of policy elites, official histories and familiar canons of scholarship.

American Civil War re-enactors’ dress as a symbol of political beliefs

Abstract The purpose of this research was to explore why some American Civil War re-enactors will galvanize while others will not, and whether this dress behaviour is tied to their political beliefs or their purpose while re-enacting. Galvanize, a term used by re-enactors, refers to the act of changing from one uniform (i.e., Union) into another (i.e., Confederate). It is common at American Civil War re-enactments that the two sides are uneven and some re-enactors need to change sides, or galvanize, to create a balanced battle scene. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected via an online survey from 214 re-enactors regarding their stance on political issues, purpose while re-enacting and willingness to galvanize. The theoretical basis for this research is Symbolic Interaction Theory and Dress and the Public, Private, and Secret Self model. This research adds an empirical approach to previous literature and documents perspectives from both Northern and Southern re-enactors.

Things I’ll Never Say: Stories about Our Secret Selves by Ann Angel (review)

Things I’ll Never Say: Stories about Our Secret Selves by Ann Angel (review)

Fairy Tales for Executives: Story Telling as a Catalyst for Change

It is suggested that fairy tales provide insights to the reader as they deal with moral, social or existential dilemmas. Similarly, these tales may be used to illustrate how executives deal with the challenges they face in their leadership roles. Archetypal in nature, these tales, with their immediately recognizable dramatics, characters and fundamental moral truths, are embedded in our ancestral human history and serve as the rootstock of most world fiction and drama. As these stories involve the reader or listener imaginatively, they also appeal to our secret selves. And from an existential point of view, fairy tales suggest that the ‘happy ever after’ is achievable. Virtue will be rewarded, vice and foolishness will be punished, and the weak become strong. This article imparts the idea that fairy tales are a shortcut to moral lessons, providing insights into human behavior. When applied to the realm of executive leadership, they illustrate the dangers of leadership and various ways in which executives can derail. It is also suggested that the psychological healing process at the heart of fairy tales can be a source of inspiration for its reader. In this context, fairy tales can take on a basic therapeutic function, touching on humankind’s deepest fears and desires and helping them integrate these two drivers into a healthy personality. Furthermore, in the article the argument is put forth that the models of the hero or heroine in fairy tales, who struggles and eventually succeeds by taking resolute action, may stimulate executives to do the same. By identifying with the characters in these stories, executives come to better understand their own internal struggles and turn into more self-aware leaders.

Penelope Fitzgerald: a life

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) was a great English writer, who would never have described herself in such grand terms. Her novels were short, spare masterpieces, self-concealing, oblique and subtle. She won the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore in 1979, and her last work, The Blue Flower, was acclaimed as a work of genius. The early novels drew on her own experiences - a boat on the Thames in the 1960s; the BBC in war time; a failing bookshop in Suffolk; an eccentric stage-school. The later ones opened out to encompass historical worlds which, magically, she seemed to possess entirely: Russia before the Revolution; post-war Italy; Germany in the time of the Romantic writer Novalis. Fitzgerald's life is as various and as cryptic as her fiction. It spans most of the twentieth century, and moves from a Bishop's Palace to a sinking barge, from a demanding intellectual family to hardship and poverty, from a life of teaching and obscurity to a blaze of renown. She was first published at sixty and became famous at eighty. This is a story of lateness, patience and persistence: a private form of heroism. Loved and admired, and increasingly recognised as one of the outstanding novelists of her time, she remains, also, mysterious and intriguing. She liked to mislead people with a good imitation of an absent-minded old lady, but under that scatty front were a steel-sharp brain and an imagination of wonderful reach. This brilliant account - by a biographer whom Fitzgerald herself admired - pursues her life, her writing, and her secret self, with fascinated interest.

Naked exhibitionism: gendered performance and public exposure

What does it mean to be naked in public? Approaching this question from across the disciplines, this book examines the evolution of female exhibitionism from criminal taboo to prime-time entertainment. Taking an interdisciplinary approach which brings together all fields of popular culture, including literature, media, film and linguistics, Naked Exhibitionism examines gendered exhibitionism from the mid-twentieth century to the present day and asks whether bodily exposure provides the liberation it enacts or restricts our most secret selves to the sanitised realm of socially-sanctioned gender roles. From the art of burlesque as a riotous kingdom of the imagination to reality TV which helps women to unearth their 'true' and buried feminine selves, Nally and Smith explore how the critical history and theory of exhibitionism intersects with the wider movement towards gender equality and the effects of second-wave feminism to problematise the naked female form. Female and gender-transgressive performers from Bette Davis to Dita von Teese are placed in their cultural context alongside the works of Peter Ackroyd and the controversial playwright Sarah Kane to demonstrate that female exhibitionism remains at the heart of popular culture, and is critically examined to uncover the contradictions behind its evolving representations. Innovative, unflinching and pertinent, Naked Exhibitionism explores naked bodies in the public gaze and critically reformulates the feminist and cultural debate around the performance of gender.

Authorship and Shaw's Shakes Versus Shav

Authorship and Shaw's <i>Shakes Versus Shav</i>