When I was a college student, I had recurrent dreams about becoming a psychology major. I loved psychology, because it seemed to address issues that mattered, particularly when I took social psychology courses with a young Yale (now Stanford) professor named Jennifer Eberhardt. As an aspiring law professor, I was convinced that a better understanding of the human psyche would help me understand discrimination and social injustice.

Social psychology attempts to get to the core of key issues like: Why are people racist? Why would white slave-masters want to have sex with black slaves, even as they debated that blacks were less than fully human? Why do so many men have rape fantasies? Why would a member of a racial minority discriminate against another racial group or even against members of his own race?

These classes fueled hours of interesting debates, and some of the core theories have stuck with me to this day, particularly the debate regarding the unified self, which came up again the other day at the Web 2.0 conference in Berlin when I was chatting about the pros and cons of Facebook with Oriol and my new friend Ingo Di Bella.

I was arguing that Facebook forces me to be an exhibitionist, to demonstrate all of the various elements of my personality that might be captured on film when I’m acting silly or represented by my friends from various walks of life.

Oriol was arguing that that’s precisely what he likes about Facebook — the fact that you are able to peek into these other aspects of your friends’ or acquaintances’ lives. The fewer filters there are with regard to these other elements of a colleagues’ personality, the more fun Facebook is.

To summarise: Exhibitionism bad. Voyeurism good.

This made me think about the unified self debate. Some psychologists argue that the self is a singular, coherent, and specific entity. In other words, deep down there’s one Gary — the “real” Gary, and everything else is just a reflection of that unified personality. Other psychologists say that the unified self is a myth, that there is no “real” me, that Gary is just a set of characters or personas that are often contradictory and shifting depending on the context.

No simple answer to the universal question of: Who the hell am I?

I’m more in the “no unified self” school, even though it goes against certain conceptions of their being a soul. I’m very different around my parents, around investors, around my best friends, around people whom I’ve just met, when starting a new job, when I’m the boss — everything depends on how I feel in a situation and the relevant rules of conduct. There are some generally shared traits, but sometimes I can seem like two different people.

My parents don’t know all of my friends, and I’d like to keep it that way.

To me, that’s the big problem with Facebook. It assumes that there is a unified self that I want to put on display for the whole world to see. But that’s not quite true. I have so many elements to my personality, and depending on who’s around and the amount of alcohol being consumed, the image I present to the whole can be quite different.

I think that filters would be a good thing — controlling who gets to see what — but I agree with Oriol that then the fun of Facebook would disappear. Quite a dilemma . . . for Facebook.

I don’t aim to solve it. I’m not an investor, so I don’t really have to.

Instead I’ll end with the lyrics to a song that sums up the anti-unified self point of view quite nicely. They’re from Meredith Brooks’ hit song from the late 1990s.

I hate the world today
You’re so good to me
I know but I can’t change
tried to tell you but you look at me like maybe I’m an angel
underneath
innocent and sweet
Yesterday I cried
You must have been relieved to see the softer side
I can understand how you’d be so confused
I don’t envy you
I’m a little bit of everything
all rolled into one

Chorus:
I’m a bitch, I’m a lover
I’m a child, I’m a mother
I’m a sinner, I’m a saint
I do not feel ashamed
I’m your health, I’m your dream
I’m nothing in between
You know you wouldn’t want it any other way

So take me as I am
This may mean you’ll have to be a stronger man
Rest assured that when I start to make you nervous
and I’m going to extremes
tomorrow I will change
and today won’t mean a thing