The self as perpetual experiment: Psychodynamic comments on some aspects of contemporary urban culture

The author examines the interaction between a dominant trend in contemporary urban culture and the dynamics of the search for identity and exemplifies it through the therapeutic work with a young woman who sought to find a personal voice and style within urban space. Sociologists and philosophers have argued that contemporary urban culture, in a Nietzschean way, views the self as the locus of perpetual experimentation. The self is to be created like a work of art, ranging from the shaping of the body to the conscious creation of one's lifestyle. The search for authorship over one's life has become an integral part of culture, and helping patients in this search requires clinicians to develop a new vocabulary.