Individuality and selfhood are difficult concepts to put into words. How does one define these terms? How are they perceived? These questions have greatly troubled psychologists and scholars throughout human history, as ‘selfhood’ and ‘individuality’ come with varying cultural and scientific connotations. 

Perhaps one way to define selfhood is to consider contemporary hypotheses from psychology and neuroscience, in addition to traditional Indigenous perspectives. Such an amalgamation of two different schools of thought and practice — the former focused on individualism and the latter focused on communalism — might provide the context for how we perceive our own selfhood.

Selfhood in the brain: How do we produce ownership of our bodies?

Modern scientific conceptions of selfhood are primarily rooted in individualism. Rather than focusing on the collective experiences moulded by communal interaction, Western sciences perceive one’s individuality to be contingent on internal mechanisms: namely, the brain.

The brain is seen as the locus of one’s experiences and as such is capable of manifesting the recognition of the self and individual expression through basic cognitive processes. In exemplifying this sense of individuality, neural processes are therefore able to exert an overarching sense of ownership and control over one’s own body.

Damage or temporary changes to specific parts of the brain and its neural networks — networks of synapses and neurons — can affect our perceptions of individuality. Examples of neurologically-induced changes in individuality are out of body experiences, wherein an individual may feel as if they are observing themselves outside their physical body. 

In a 2010 Consciousness and Cognition case study conducted by the Brain-Mind Institute in Switzerland, researchers sought to analyze how “bodily self-consciousness” — in other words, the bodily perception of the self — might be impacted by the brain’s integration of external inputs, such as self-location, or where we experience ourselves to be located. They found that factors that impede the brain’s control over the body can lead to losses in individuality and self-perception. 

The study’s subjects were two patients with epilepsy, who in a sense both felt disassociated with parts of their body. One patient noted that during an epileptic episode, he would feel as if his left side was under increasing pressure. The pressure was to the point that he felt as if a “stranger” was in control of his left side, thus leading him to believe that only his right side was functional and “his.” The second patient also noted that, during an episode, he would experience such an intense numbness in his neck, chest, and legs that he was under the impression that he was losing all awareness in the lower portion of his body and felt as if he was a mere observer of his body. 

As one can see, modern Western ideals are more firmly rooted in accounting for how selfhood manifests itself in each person. It wasn’t defined as a response to external inhibitions but a more individualistic, internal examination. 

Selfhood in Indigenous Australian communities

In contrast to Western science, Indigenous conceptions of selfhood and individuality adopt a more holistic stance, recognizing the importance of community and collective experience in shaping identity and individuality.

Take the Torres Strait Islanders and Indigenous peoples in Australia, for example. These Indigenous communities see selfhood not as an individual identity but as an interconnected state of being linked with one’s community, one’s home, and one’s own sense of self-belief. However, Western colonization — and with it, the sense of Western individualism — disrupted this sense of selfhood for the individuals of these communities, disconnecting them from their cultural heritage rooted in kinship and land.

A 2022 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health study — conducted by Australia’s National Empowerment Project, which aims to promote social and emotional wellbeing in Indigenous Australian groups — found that an acknowledgment of these non-individual aspects of selfhood can contribute toward a sense of agency and motivation for them to overcome colonial trauma, racism, and dispossession. In this case, Indigenous peoples’ perceptions of selfhood have now emerged as a means of rediscovering a close relationship with nature as well as a form of healing from the loss of culture, land, and people.

Understanding selfhood is, therefore, not merely a theoretical examination but a field that holds wide-ranging implications for our social wellbeing. Reconciling more Western examinations on the subject with existing Indigenous beliefs can help develop necessary cross-cultural approaches to ensure the efficient provision of mental health, education, and social support systems by prioritizing the variable culture-specific identities and contributing factors to selfhood. Thus, selfhood and individuality must be understood as more than singular or collective; they must be understood more fluidly to fully encompass the range of human experience.