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There is a fantasy that haunts us—the fantasy of the unified self.

We imagine that somewhere beneath all our contradictions, all our competing desires and impulses, there exists a coherent “I” pulling the strings.

We believe that with enough therapy, enough meditation, enough self-work, we might finally integrate ourselves into wholeness. But what if this fantasy is not only impossible but fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be human?

In my practice, I encounter this yearning constantly. People come to me feeling fragmented, torn between different desires, different versions of themselves. They ask: “Why can’t I just figure out what I want?” or “Why do I keep sabotaging myself?” or “Why does one part of me want this while another part wants something completely opposite?” They speak as if this internal division is a problem to be solved, a wound to be healed. I would be a hypocrite if I deny that I myself don’t ask these questions all the time.

But what if the division isn’t a bug—it’s a feature? What if we’re not meant to be unified at all?

The Barred Subject: Lacan’s Radical Insight

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan gave us one of the most uncomfortable truths about human existence: the subject is inherently split. He designated this with his symbol $—the barred subject—literally marking the self with a line of division. This isn’t just philosophical abstraction; it’s a description of the structural reality of consciousness itself.

Here’s what Lacan understood: the moment you enter language, the moment you become a speaking subject, you become divided. There’s the part of you that speaks, that can say “I want this” or “I am that”—your conscious, articulate self. And then there’s everything that remains unspeakable, that churns in the unconscious, that resists being put into words. You can never fully say what you desire because the act of speaking about desire already transforms it, displaces it.

Think about the last time you tried to explain to someone why you love them, or why you’re drawn to a particular career, or why certain things make you anxious. The words never quite capture it, do they? There’s always something left over, something that escapes articulation. That remainder—that’s where you live, in the gap between what you can say and what you actually feel.

The uncomfortable truth is that you don’t have full access to yourself. Your conscious awareness is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it churns a whole world of desires, drives, and motivations that operate according to their own logic—a logic you can’t directly access, only infer from your symptoms, your slips of tongue, your dreams, your inexplicable behaviors.

The Brain as Battleground: An Evolutionary Perspective

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Modern neuroscience confirms Lacan’s insight, but from a completely different angle. Your brain isn’t a unified command center with a single executive making decisions. Instead, it’s more like a committee of systems that evolved at different times, under different pressures, each with its own agenda—and these systems are often in conflict with each other.

Evolution didn’t design you from scratch with a coherent blueprint. Instead, it jerry-rigged you together over millions of years, layering new systems on top of old ones, each responding to different survival pressures. You’ve got ancient reptilian systems concerned with basic survival, mammalian systems focused on social bonding and emotion, and newer cortical systems involved in planning and abstract thought. These systems don’t always agree. In fact, they’re often antagonistic.

This isn’t a flaw; it’s how you’re built. Your brain is fundamentally antagonistic to itself.

Consider a simple example: you know intellectually that you should save money for the future, but you really want to buy something now. One system is focused on long-term planning and delayed gratification; another is screaming for immediate reward. Or think about social anxiety: part of you desperately wants connection, but another part is terrified of exposure and rejection. These aren’t just “conflicting thoughts”—they’re different neural systems with different evolutionary histories, different priorities, and different ways of processing information.

The Seven Voices Within

The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp’s research gives us a remarkable map of this internal multiplicity. Through cross-mammalian studies, he identified seven basic emotional systems that we share with other mammals, each with its own neurological substrate and its own agenda:

SEEKING: the system that drives you toward exploration, curiosity, the hunt for novelty. This is the feeling that pulls you forward into uncertainty, that makes you want to discover, to learn, to achieve.

RAGE: the system activated when obstacles block your goals. This is the energy that says “Remove this barrier!” It’s frustration, anger, the impulse to destroy what’s in your way.

FEAR: the system designed to keep you safe from bodily harm. This is the voice of caution, avoidance, the impulse to flee or freeze when danger appears.

PANIC: the distress you feel at separation from caregivers or loved ones. This is separation anxiety, the desperate need for connection, the feeling of being lost and alone.

CARE: the nurturing system that motivates you to protect and care for others, especially the vulnerable. This is tenderness, compassion, the maternal/paternal impulse.

LUST: the sexual system that drives you toward mating and reproduction. This needs no explanation.

PLAY: the system that engages you in reciprocal social games, exploration of boundaries, joyful interaction.

Now here’s the crucial insight: you’re not driven by abstract evolutionary goals. You’re driven by feelings. Each system has a set-point, and deviations from that set-point generate specific qualities of pleasure or unpleasure. When you’re separated from someone you love, PANIC generates distress. When you encounter an obstacle to your goals, RAGE generates frustration. When you discover something novel, SEEKING generates excitement.

But here’s where it gets complex: these systems compete for control. At any given moment, multiple systems might be activated, each demanding priority, each trying to orient your attention and behavior according to its own agenda. You’re not experiencing one unified emotion; you’re experiencing the resultant vector of multiple systems pulling in different directions.

The Impossible Coordination

Think about this practically. You’re at a party. Your SEEKING system wants to explore, meet new people, discover interesting conversations. Your FEAR system is scanning for social threats, monitoring for signs of rejection or embarrassment. Your PANIC system might be activated if you came alone, generating separation distress. Your PLAY system wants to engage in reciprocal social games, to laugh and connect. Your CARE system might be focused on making sure others are comfortable. Each system is adjusting what you perceive, what seems salient, what actions feel possible.

The “you” that experiences this is the result of these systems negotiating—often badly. One moment SEEKING might dominate, pushing you toward an interesting stranger. The next moment FEAR takes over, flooding you with anxiety about what they might think of you. Then PANIC kicks in, making you desperately scan the room for a familiar face. Then RAGE arrives because this whole situation is frustrating and you just want to leave.

Who are you in all this? You’re not the unified agent making choices. You’re the site where these different systems meet, clash, and temporarily produce something like coherent action—until the balance shifts again.

This is why you “sabotage” yourself. This is why you’re “inconsistent.” This is why one part of you wants something while another part wants its opposite. These aren’t just competing thoughts; they’re competing neural systems, each with its own evolutionary logic, each prioritizing different aspects of survival and flourishing.

Living With Division

So what do we do with this knowledge? How do we live as fundamentally divided beings in a culture that demands we “know ourselves” and “be authentic”?

First, we stop pretending we’re unified. The fantasy of the integrated self is not only impossible—it’s counterproductive. When you expect to have one clear desire, one consistent personality, one stable sense of who you are, you’ll inevitably be disappointed. You’re not built that way. Nobody is.

Second, we get curious about our divisions. When you feel internally conflicted, instead of trying to resolve it immediately or declaring one voice the “real you,” pause. Which systems are activated? What set-points have been violated? When you feel PANIC, what separation has occurred? When RAGE kicks in, what obstacle has appeared? When FEAR dominates, what threat has been detected—real or imagined?

Third, we learn to negotiate between our different systems rather than demanding they fall in line. You’re not a dictator ruling over a unified kingdom; you’re more like a mediator working with a fractious coalition. Sometimes FEAR needs to be heard; sometimes it needs to be thanked for its concern and asked to step back so SEEKING can lead for a while. Sometimes RAGE has valuable information about boundaries being violated; sometimes it’s responding to a minor inconvenience as if it were a life-threatening obstacle.

The Lacanian Knot

Lacan has this notion of the Borromean knot—three interlocking rings (the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary) that hold the subject together. Remove any one ring, and the whole structure collapses. The subject exists only in the tension between these three registers, never fully residing in any one of them.

This is how you exist too. You’re held together by tension, by the dynamic interplay of competing systems, by the gap between what you can say and what you feel, by the antagonism between different evolutionary priorities. You’re not a thing; you’re a process.

And here’s what I’ve learned, both from my work and from my own experience of being a divided subject: the people who suffer least are not those who’ve achieved some mythical integration. They’re the ones who’ve learned to be comfortable with their own multiplicity. They don’t expect their desires to be consistent. They don’t beat themselves up when different parts want different things. They’ve made peace with the fact that the “I” that wakes up in the morning might have a different agenda than the “I” that goes to bed at night.

The Courage of Incompleteness

The universe is enormous, and you are an insignificant collection of competing neural systems trying to cooperate long enough to keep the organism alive. This might sound depressing, but I find it strangely liberating. You don’t have to figure out who you “really” are because there is no unified “real you” to discover. You don’t have to resolve all your internal contradictions because contradiction is your natural state. You don’t have to achieve some perfect self-knowledge because the divided subject is, by definition, unknowable to itself.

The question is not “How do I become whole?” but “How do I live as a multiplicity?” Not “How do I overcome my divisions?” but “How do I allow different parts to speak without one tyrannizing all the others?”

Lacan knew this. Panksepp’s neuroscience confirms it. And if you’re honest with yourself, you know it too. You’ve always been many, not one. You’ve always been divided, not integrated. You’ve always been in conflict with yourself because that’s what a subject is—a site of antagonism, a collection of competing systems, a gap between consciousness and unconscious, a voice that speaks but can never fully say what it means.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that’s not a problem to be solved but a reality to be inhabited. Perhaps the real work is not integration but negotiation. Not wholeness but choreography. Not unity but dialogue among the many voices that constitute what we call “I.”

Because at the end of the day, you’re not one person with many moods. You’re many systems masquerading as one person. And once you accept that, things get a lot less confusing.

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