The Social Roots of Human Identity and the Interplay of the Selves

Abstract

In this paper, two main aspects of Cristina Meini’s From Cradle to Internet. The Social Nature of Personal Identity are taken into consideration. In the first place, Meini’s argument concerning the structuring role for self development of caregivers’ communicative mirroring is analysed in the light of current literature concerning the multi-layered architecture of identity. I propose to integrate Meini’s interesting socio-cultural perspective with a dialectical view of the interaction between fundamental self-monitoring mechanisms addressing bodily self-awareness and psychological as well as social components of self-knowledge. This integration widely relies on the most recent contributions from Peter Fonagy’s model of mentalization deficits studied in the clinical field of personality disorders. In the second section of the comment, I present some possible ways to tackle the problem of “extended mind” through internet devices raised by Meini. In particular, the notion of extended mind is confronted with the specificities of identity building in the use of social networks.