Introduction

As soon as we conceptualize “the self” as a dynamic structure that is rooted in communicative relations, we bump into the question of how to account for the continuity and consistency most people experience across time and situations. Fogel addresses this perennial question at the very beginning of his chapter when he asks how people can have a sense of “stability over time if psychological experience is fundamentally relational and dynamic?” (p. 93). His answer focuses on the role of emotions: people perceive consistency in their emotional experiences and this contributes to a sense of stability of the self through time. In this commentary I will first criticize Fogel's proposal with respect to emotions, and then propose two alternative candidates for sustaining the sense of stability. The first is individual embodiment. Fogel already touches upon the importance of embodiment, but I will attribute a more fundamental role to embodied being than he does. My second candidate for sustaining stability is autobiographical memory. The recollections of people's personal past are organized in such a way that they generate consistency and continuity in normal individuals.

Emotional experiences are context bound and subject to evaluation

In this section I will take issue with Fogel's argument of the perceived consistency in emotional experiences. According to me, it is difficult to experience consistency in emotions because the emotion process is as much subject to the dynamisms of communicative interaction as selves are. Emotions unfold in a particular communicative context, and are always evaluated with respect to their appropriateness. This generally leads to adjustments in the emotional experience.