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Traditionally, personal identity is considered to be important for psychological health and adaptive functioning. Identity diffusion and other more severe forms of disturbance associated with personal identity are regarded as being essential parts of the borderline personality disorder. Moreover, disturbances in identity are seen as being part of the dynamic background for many of the symptoms and maladaptive behaviors found in borderline patients. It is argued, that the development of personal identity is intimately related to, and indeed dependent on, elements of modern culture, with significant cultural changes having affected the conditions under which human identity develops. Therefore, the identity diffusion seen in patients with borderline disorders must be understood in relation to not only the individual patient's personal history and inner structures but also contemporary late modern culture and social organization.
"... it Is very difficult for me to let other people get close to me. I am simply too afraid that they will discover that I am nothing at all, that I am nobody, a shadow, a ghost. I am afraid that they will find out that I don't have any opinion about anything, no attitudes, no ideology, that I don't know anything about anything, and suddenly they will figure out how boring I really am" (Anonymous borderline patient).
In the famous chapter entitled Of identity and diversity' in 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding' by John Locke (1690) the author writes "to find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for." According to Locke 'person' refers to a "thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places" (p. 67). He further claims that "since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes everyone to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking beings, in this alone consists personal identity" (p. 67). Locke's solution to the problem of personal identity is then, one that is based on a continuity of self-consciousness.
There is no definition of human or personal identity that is universally agreed upon. Depending on the context, personal identity has been understood as being a substance, a subjective experience or personal 'sense of self,' an inner structure,...