Does a "True Self" Exist?

[The Grand Nudger]

I think the question sets up a dichotomy that may not exist.  What would a false self be, for example?  When is something not what it is, whatever that may be?  On what grounds do we parcel up some portion of a thing, calling it true self and lay the rest aside as "other"?  I can think of extreme outliers, dissociative disorders...but even there, there doesn't seem to be a false self, only an intentional construct, an extension of the true self manufactured to further it's goals.  I think that all of the difficulty is bound up in expectations of the "true" bit, not the "self" bit.  We think of true things as unchanging, without guile perhaps, we think of them as...true.  Why -would- a human self be unchanging, why would it be anything less than duplicitous and calculating? Are we keeping in mind the job the self has..... when we start to set the borders on what constitutes a true self, as opposed to some other type of self?  I think that when we refer to any "other" type of self we are not actually referring to separate selves, or even separate things or components, but differently valued portions of one thing. Whatever our true selves may be, they must be something that is possible for us, our description must match something that we are capable of (this is the basis of your contention that the true self can;t exist, ofc). My true self for example, can't be a time traveling alien, because I'm not a time traveling alien, I can't do that, or be that. Is unchanging or constant or singular really something that a human being can pull off? Can we do that? If not, then why would our true self have those attributes, why would we set that as the bar, and what could we possibly say about ourselves -beyond- the borders of a contention in which true self is defined as such...what relevance does it have to a human being and whatever self we may claim? Why choose to describe something in a manner it cannot possibly exist as, only to determine that the thing being described must, by virtue of that description, be impossible?

Your "true self" was the one that liked skull t-shirts -and- the one that advised you not to wear them. Your true self is a social self, after all, and it weighs social options and consequences...doesn't it? You know, from experience, that your true self is not as you would like to describe it, as unchanging or constant in the face of multiplicity and divergence. Perhaps this means that your description of a true self is wrong, not that you don't have one, or that a true self can't possibly exist, completely (that's all that can follow from your description and objections, after all)?

/two cents.