THE PUBLIC "I"

In his famous chapter on the "Self" in his "Psychology" the late Professor James points out that everyone is made up of a number of diverse egos. Thus there is the self which we show to our employers and superiors; there is another for our intimate friends, and yet another for our families. Among others there is the self which we show to the community--our public ego--which is nothing more than our impressions of the way that people in general regard us.

Here in America, the public "I" has assumed especially large proportions. The newspapers, with their flaring headlines, keep us in a continual worry of excitement. We are rapidly becoming a "front-page" nation, whose creed is "it pays to advertise" and whose existence is bound up in the news of the hour. We pass from thrill to thrill almost without pause; and the greatest thrill of all is to know that one's name is in every newspaper and on every lip. No less than eight people, for example, have confessed in turn to the murder of the banker Elwell, and each in turn has been proved a liar after a day or two of dazzling front page existence. Is it any wonder that serious people advocate a jail sentence for false confessions which 'put the police to so much trouble for nothing?

All this, however, is but a symptom of a larger disorder--the undue expansion of our public egos. While no two people will agree as to just what constitutes "balanced" personality, all will admit that the over-emphasis of one or more of our selves is dangerous. We, as a nation, pay too much stress on "what the public thinks" about us; we indulge too freely our inherent propensity for being in the public eye. Unfortunately, the cure is not so simple as the diagnosis. Only the wide-spread recognition of the injurious effects of too much "publicity" will result in proper repressive measures. Consequently it behooves each one of us to curb his public "I" to the utmost in the interests of general sanity.