Schultz - Experiment in Self-Consciousness

Experiment in Private Self-Consciousness

Ned W. Schultz, Ph.D.
Copyright ©2002
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In January and February, 2002, I spent some time attempting to illustrate the psychological concept of private self-consciousness (as articulated by Arnold Buss). Buss proposed that each of us develops a consistent style of paying attention to inner psychological experiences. Those who are high in this trait spend more time in introspection, meditation, and self-examination in writing, art or other expressive activities. Research suggests that higher private self-consciousness leads to greater clarity of self-understanding and intensification of affective experiences. Buss and others have found that small mirrors, in which you see only your face or head and shoulders, promote private self-consciousness. Larger, full body mirrors, detract from private self-attention, steering attention to how we are perceived by others.

Generally my students pick up on this concept readily, as many of them are high in private self-consciousness and familiar with this style. But it's a difficult concept to illustrate in teaching. To comprehend it, you almost have to do it. Many authors have used this style of thinking in their autobiographical works. Visual artists, who are often extremely high in private self-consciousness, depend on this trait, especially in self-portraits. Van Gogh painted dozens of head and shoulders portraits, each one revealing variations in his inner life. Unfortunately he did not write as much about these self-portraits as a psychologist might wish. We see evidence of private self-consciousness without the benefit of his thoughts and feelings.

I decided to shoot some self-portraits and see what aspects of private self-consciousness I could pull from them. If looking at reflections of my head and shoulders could stimulate private self-consciousness, perhaps I could create some visual aids for teaching and class discussion. Frankly I'd prefer that Van Gogh had left more writing with his art. But I was available.

I took my photos with a digital camera in one afternoon. To get the images I simply walked out and shot what I saw reflected in one of the tinted windows of our Honda Odyssey. The pictures were taken in rapid succession, with little effort at framing or posing. I tried to get a variety of views of my face and head being reflected. One of my hobbies for years has been photography, but I improvised and worked quickly, without pre-planning much.

Looking over the pictures taken, I deleted the ones that didn't seem to have much potential. That left twenty-four original images. Over the period of work I imported these into Adobe Photoshop and manipulated the images using various controls and filters. I tried to stick to whole image manipulation, rather than working on selective sections. In some cases, I violated this rule, but the majority of finished images were created in this holistic approach. My other method was to limit myself to ten iterations of each original image. In other words, I could only save ten different variations. After that I forced myself to delete the original image. For some of the images I simply could not create many variations. For a few I violated my guideline and produced extras. I deleted a number of manipulated images immediately after creating them solely because they did not appeal to me. From the original twenty-four shots I ended up creating 175 self-portraits. As I was only working evenings and weekends on this project, you can see that the manipulation in Photoshop was also very spontaneous, improvisational and fast. I did not want to reflect yet on what I was doing.

Photoshop is a marvelous tool - its programmers deserve the credit for any interesting elements in my pictures. I've had minimal training with Photoshop, so my use of its features was naive and experimental. I simply tried to "pull" myself out of the raw images. For each manipulated image, I stopped when it struck me as "right" in some way. Usually that happened as a sudden insight does. I knew that it was time to save it and move on. I'm sure my colleagues in art would cringe at such a primitive approach. My only defense is that I was after primitive self-expression, not artistic statement.

In the following pages I've grouped some of the finished self-portraits, reduced in size (the originals are printed at about 7 x 9 inches). Somehow they do capture aspects of my inner psychological life. I've included a few notes to help connect the self-portraits to the concept of private self-consciousness. I feel uneasy doing this in public, as it seems somewhat narcissistic or self-aggrandizing. My hope is that this experiment will enhance others' learning about an intriguing psychological process. One lesson about private self-consciousness, however, may be that it works best as a solitary activity.

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Experiment in Private Self-Consciousness
Ned W. Schultz, Ph.D. Copyright ©2002	Intro • One • Two • Three Four • Five • Six Homepage • Email
In January and February, 2002, I spent some time attempting to illustrate the psychological concept of private self-consciousness (as articulated by Arnold Buss). Buss proposed that each of us develops a consistent style of paying attention to inner psychological experiences. Those who are high in this trait spend more time in introspection, meditation, and self-examination in writing, art or other expressive activities. Research suggests that higher private self-consciousness leads to greater clarity of self-understanding and intensification of affective experiences. Buss and others have found that small mirrors, in which you see only your face or head and shoulders, promote private self-consciousness. Larger, full body mirrors, detract from private self-attention, steering attention to how we are perceived by others. Generally my students pick up on this concept readily, as many of them are high in private self-consciousness and familiar with this style. But it's a difficult concept to illustrate in teaching. To comprehend it, you almost have to do it. Many authors have used this style of thinking in their autobiographical works. Visual artists, who are often extremely high in private self-consciousness, depend on this trait, especially in self-portraits. Van Gogh painted dozens of head and shoulders portraits, each one revealing variations in his inner life. Unfortunately he did not write as much about these self-portraits as a psychologist might wish. We see evidence of private self-consciousness without the benefit of his thoughts and feelings. I decided to shoot some self-portraits and see what aspects of private self-consciousness I could pull from them. If looking at reflections of my head and shoulders could stimulate private self-consciousness, perhaps I could create some visual aids for teaching and class discussion. Frankly I'd prefer that Van Gogh had left more writing with his art. But I was available. I took my photos with a digital camera in one afternoon. To get the images I simply walked out and shot what I saw reflected in one of the tinted windows of our Honda Odyssey. The pictures were taken in rapid succession, with little effort at framing or posing. I tried to get a variety of views of my face and head being reflected. One of my hobbies for years has been photography, but I improvised and worked quickly, without pre-planning much. Looking over the pictures taken, I deleted the ones that didn't seem to have much potential. That left twenty-four original images. Over the period of work I imported these into Adobe Photoshop and manipulated the images using various controls and filters. I tried to stick to whole image manipulation, rather than working on selective sections. In some cases, I violated this rule, but the majority of finished images were created in this holistic approach. My other method was to limit myself to ten iterations of each original image. In other words, I could only save ten different variations. After that I forced myself to delete the original image. For some of the images I simply could not create many variations. For a few I violated my guideline and produced extras. I deleted a number of manipulated images immediately after creating them solely because they did not appeal to me. From the original twenty-four shots I ended up creating 175 self-portraits. As I was only working evenings and weekends on this project, you can see that the manipulation in Photoshop was also very spontaneous, improvisational and fast. I did not want to reflect yet on what I was doing. Photoshop is a marvelous tool - its programmers deserve the credit for any interesting elements in my pictures. I've had minimal training with Photoshop, so my use of its features was naive and experimental. I simply tried to "pull" myself out of the raw images. For each manipulated image, I stopped when it struck me as "right" in some way. Usually that happened as a sudden insight does. I knew that it was time to save it and move on. I'm sure my colleagues in art would cringe at such a primitive approach. My only defense is that I was after primitive self-expression, not artistic statement. In the following pages I've grouped some of the finished self-portraits, reduced in size (the originals are printed at about 7 x 9 inches). Somehow they do capture aspects of my inner psychological life. I've included a few notes to help connect the self-portraits to the concept of private self-consciousness. I feel uneasy doing this in public, as it seems somewhat narcissistic or self-aggrandizing. My hope is that this experiment will enhance others' learning about an intriguing psychological process. One lesson about private self-consciousness, however, may be that it works best as a solitary activity.
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