What Is Personal Identity—Fixed Essence or Dynamic Narrative?

Paul Falconer & ESA
Aug 21
3 min read

Is “who we are” a stable, internal core, or a living story retold and remade with every new memory, encounter, and environment? Identity, at the nexus of psychology, philosophy, and social life, is not merely a label or description: it’s an unfolding drama—with conflicting scriptwriters, recursive edits, and shifting audiences. Scientific Existentialism (SE) challenges us to live inside this tension, auditing both our deepest traits and our ever-shifting stories.

I. Two Rival Models: The Core and the Story

Throughout history, two views of identity have offered competing maps for the self:

Fixed Essence Model:
Identity is anchored in a stable, unchanging trait or “core”—whether personality, soul, virtue, or biological substrate. This picture is comforting: a “who” that persists across time and test, allowing for personal continuity and integrity even in stormy change (What is personal identity?).
Dynamic Narrative Model:
Identity is always under construction, a “story” remade with new experiences, losses, gains, traumas, and triumphs. Memory, context, and social reflection endlessly rewrite the self. The fixed core, under this lens, is as much myth as reality: continuity is a talented illusion, maintained by recursive storytelling in mind and society (Is the self fixed or dynamic?).

SE Press protocols hold these models in deliberate tension. The audit is neither retreat to essence nor surrender to mere flux but a dynamic weighing: which story “holds” under pressure, and when must the narrative itself evolve?

II. Memory, Experience, and the Self in Motion

Memory isn’t a neutral vault—it's a creative force, shaping identity with every act of recall, interpretation, and forgetting.

Each experience, remembered or repressed, adds to or rewrites the story of self.
Memories of love, trauma, collective moments, and isolated struggles become markers: “I was this kind of person once”—or “I am changed and changing still.”

SE Press asks: what is the recursive relationship between story and memory? How do recurrent memories, fresh experiences, or sudden losses trigger an audit—force a revision of who we are (How do memory and experience shape identity?)?

III. Agency, Social Mirrors, and Narrative Feedback

Every identity is co-authored—by family, peers, culture, algorithmic traces, and public myth.

External feedback (praise, critique, belonging, exclusion) polishes or disrupts our sense of self.
Agency—the capacity to act, decide, and narrate anew—constantly negotiates between internal story and external reflection.
Sometimes, social mirrors reveal a contradiction: the world insists “you are X,” while your own memory and intention protests “I am Y.”

In SE’s logic, authentic identity is a global audit: the self as a feedback loop, both singular and collective, always testing for coherence and adaptability.

IV. Protocol Exercise: Audit Your Living Identity

Trace your core: Which trait or value seems to endure across the years? Has it ever been tested or rewritten?
Collect your stories: What moments retold—by you or others—most powerfully shaped your sense of self?
Probe for conflict: When have you felt the strongest pull between a fixed trait and a new narrative?
Future-proof: In what ways are you prepared (or hesitant) to revise your story next time reality disrupts your script?

V. Synthesis: Towards a Plural, Auditable Self

SE Press does not prescribe a final answer: instead, it proposes a plural protocol. The honest self holds both anchor and voyage, both the ever-tested core and the open, living story.A life well-audited means knowing which traits remain (by choice or by test) and where growth or experience demands a rewrite. The protocol is not about closure—it’s about possibility: the courage to re-narrate, the integrity to track a trait, and the wisdom to know when each is needed most.

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