Possible Selves: Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders

People tend to change over time, no matter how stable they are in everyday life. Each year of life, a person goes through a certain stage of change depending on what information they received during this period or what kind of social interactions they had. Goals did not change significantly over time; rather, they took on clearer forms. For example, at first, the goals were knowledge in some fields of science. This goal without specifics is characteristic of an earlier age. Later, the goal evolves along with a person’s personality and takes other forms, such as not just knowledge but a specific profession or direction.

Possible selves are a set of desirable or feared selves represented in the mind of a person, which are formed in the course of life practice and make it possible to discover the creative nature of the self, and on the other hand, the degree to which the self is socially determined and limited (Carrillo et al., 2019). It is a kind of self-knowledge that is especially sensitive to all changes. The instability of the environment does not cause changes in the stable part of the self-concept. However, it temporarily actualizes certain possible selves, which, in turn, will determine the current views of oneself. Acting as a cognitive form of a motive or goal, representing oneself in the target space, possible selves act as an incentive to one or another’s behavior (Aardema et al., 2018). Thus, they create a diffuse field of self-concept variability. Therefore, the concept of possible selves explains the variability of human behavior in different situations.

The possible selves that people can become are all potential developmental options for the individual to become another. According to Carrillo et al. (2019) thus, it could potentially be both the selves that a person wants to become in the future and the ones that they fear and do not want to become. The relationship between possible selves and how people create meaning can be viewed in terms of how each individual thinks about and interprets their possible future possibilities. If a person attaches great importance to whom they want to become and is aware of their possible selves, this can help them achieve results more successfully. It also works the other way around, and for example, if a person knows a particular person they do not want to become, then it will be easier for them to avoid that meaning.

References

Aardema, F., Moulding, R., Melli, G., Radomsky, A. S., Doron, G., Audet, J. S., & Purcell‐Lalonde, M. (2018). The role of feared possible selves in obsessive–compulsive and related disorders: A comparative analysis of a core cognitive self‐construct in clinical samples. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 25(1), e19-e29. Web.

Carrillo, A., Rubio-Aparicio, M., Molinari, G., Enrique, A., Sanchez-Meca, J., & Banos, R. M. (2019). Effects of the best possible self intervention: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PloS one, 14(9), e0222386. Web.

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StudyCorgi. "Possible Selves: Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders." January 1, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/possible-selves-obsessive-compulsive-and-related-disorders/.

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StudyCorgi. 2024. "Possible Selves: Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders." January 1, 2024. https://studycorgi.com/possible-selves-obsessive-compulsive-and-related-disorders/.

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