Know Thyself – 2: The Fragmented Self: Psychology, Power, and the Loss of Presence

“I used to think I was one person. Now I’m not so sure.”

The modern self is not only in crisis; it is shattered. Fragmented across roles, performances, diagnoses, and projections, the self has become a mosaic of shifting parts. Where once we spoke of character or soul, we now speak of personality types, trauma patterns, attachment styles, and identities… plural.

But fragmentation is not a random accident. It is the consequence of a deeper metaphysical fracture: the belief that the self is made, and therefore, endlessly remade. If we are what we become, then we are never truly present; only arriving, adjusting, reacting.

And what cannot be present, cannot be whole.

The Therapeutic Turn: From Soul to Self-Management

In a world where identity is unstable, suffering becomes central. Enter psychology.

Modern psychology arose not as a rediscovery of being, but as a management system for fragmented selves. It shifted the conversation from essence to adaptation; not who are you? but how are you functioning? Its goal was no longer truth, but stability, coping, integration.

This is not to deny its value. Much has been learned about memory, trauma, emotion, and development. But psychology, insofar as it remains tied to the framework of becoming, cannot heal the root of the fracture. At best, it patches and redirects. At worst, it contributes to the disintegration; breaking the self into diagnoses, systems, and parts that never truly return to unity.

We begin to speak of “my inner child,” “my ego,” “my depression,” “my true self,” as though we were a parliament of conflicting identities, loosely stitched together.

But who is the one who suffers?
Who is the one who knows this pain?
That question, the core of philosophy and of Being, remains untouched.

Power and Performance: Identity as a Battleground

Alongside therapy, identity has become a matter of power. If I am fragmented, I must assert my place, and define it before someone else does. I must choose a label, proclaim it, and demand that the world reflect it back to me.

But these labels rarely rest. They shift with the winds of culture, ideology, and internal change. Identity becomes both a shield and a prison; fragile, politicized, and fiercely protected.

Performance replaces presence. We do not ask, Who are you? but How do you identify? And if your answer changes tomorrow, so be it, as long as it remains sincere.

This performance-driven self is a reaction to metaphysical groundlessness. The more we drift from Being, the louder we must declare who we are; because deep down, we fear there is no one to be found.

The Loss of Presence

Presence is not just attention. It is the reality of being here, whole, seen, and self-revealing. It is not scattered across time, not reduced to function, not negotiated through narrative. Presence is what appears as itself, not as a process, story, or becoming.

But in the age of fragmentation, presence is nearly impossible. We are distracted not only by devices and demands, but by the internal pressure to be something other than what we are. We are not allowed to be; we must always become, adapt, reformulate.

This perpetual motion is not freedom. It is a flight from the unbearable question:

Am I?

Not what am I.
Not how am I.
But: Am I?

The Structure of Being answers: Yes. And you cannot not be.

The Eternal Self: From Fragments to Fulfillment

If what is, cannot not be, then the self that truly is, is not a becoming. It is an eternal presence, a necessary appearance in the order of Being. It does not emerge from fragments. It was never made.

Each self is not the product of experience, history, or construction. These shape our awareness, but they do not generate our essence. Beneath the fragments is not an abyss, but a whole.

The recovery of identity, then, is not psychological. It is ontological. It is the recognition that I am; not as an assertion or belief, but as an eternal presence appearing here, now. The self is not found by digging through trauma or choosing a better label. It is found by recognizing what was never not true: that I appear in Being, and cannot fall out of it.

Only this can dissolve the fragmentation; not by eliminating complexity, but by grounding it. The parts do not vanish, but they are no longer mistaken for the whole. And in that clarity, the joy of presence returns.

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Looking Ahead

In the next article, we will turn to the most volatile and visible arena of identity confusion: gender and the ideal of fluidity. We will ask: is fluidity truly freedom, or the final mask of a world that has lost all form?

Next: Article 3 — The Myth of the Fluid Self: Desire, Gender, and the Collapse of Form