Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.
Erving GoffmanRead
And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the conflict between one's true self and the persona presented to others, leading to alienation.
Erving Goffman's quote examines the psychological toll of maintaining a facade in social interactions. When individuals feel compelled to present a false image that contradicts their true beliefs, they may experience a sense of disconnection from their authentic selves. This alienation can create a wariness towards others, as trusting relationships are built on authenticity and transparency.
Themes
AuthenticityAlienationSelfSocialInteraction
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on personal development, I might use this quote to emphasize the importance of being true to oneself.
More from Erving Goffman
All quotes →When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his 'social identity' - to use a term that is better than 'social status' because personal attributes such as 'honesty' are involved, as well as structural ones, like 'occupation.'
Erving GoffmanRead
I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.
Erving GoffmanRead
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
Erving GoffmanRead
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.
Erving GoffmanRead
Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks
Erving GoffmanRead
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