A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

In other words, everything the individual is and thinks and does is tied within an inescapable
relationship to what goes on around her, to her past and present relationships with other
people, and beyond them to the interlocking networks of relationships of which these others,
in turn, are part. More than this, although most people do not know each other and will have
hardly anything to do with each other, for all their freedom of movement they are tied to
each other. There is a hidden order, not directly perceptible to the senses, which locates
everyone in their particular place.
Elias has argued that the increased need for self-governance corresponds with the increased
size of societies and the greater number of networks that is typically experienced by
individuals. Standardised modes of thinking and behaving become the only acceptable
practice when large numbers congregate and interact. In this lies the contradiction that the
more uniquely one is made to sense his own individuality, the more he conforms with what
is required of him and becomes like all the other individuals around him.
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There is today a widespread modelling of the self-image which induces the
individual to feel and think as follows: “I am here, entirely on my own; all the others
are there, outside me; and each of them goes his way, just like me, with an inner self
which is his true self, his pure I, and an outer costume, his relations to other people”
(Elias, 2001:27).
While this way of thinking about the self and others may appear entirely natural and obvious,
Elias‟ view is that it is neither:
It is an expression of a particular historical moulding of the individual by the
network of relations, by a form of communal life with a very specific structure.
What speaks through is the self-consciousness of people who have been compelled
to adopt a very high degree of restraint, affect, control, renunciation and
transformation of instinct, and who are accustomed to relegating a large number of
functions, instinct-expressions and wishes to private enclaves of secrecy withdrawn
from the gaze of the „outside world‟, or even to the cellar of their own psyche (Elias,
2001:28).
Elias avoids the charge of over-determination by recognising that people differ in their
natural constitutions. Individual constitutions (or the distinctness that each individual brings
into the world and the way she perceives that distinctness) are, however, pliable.