Projecting selves: from insecurity to reflection?

This article addresses the question of the individual self under conditions of increased insecurity and risks. Considering the centrality of the relationship between ontological and social levels, it explores how the individual can develop ontological trust and the roles ego, self and subjectivity play in its formation. Surveying socio-historical data on the structure of personality and social change and examining the classical debates of Freud, Jung, Kierkegaard, Mead, Parsons and De Beauvoir, it finds an increasing prevalence of the regressive ego and fragmented personality. Searching for ways out of this predicament, the article argues that the development of a strong subjectivity can replace a regressive ego with a reflexive ego rooted in a social-existential project that would favour the formation of the ethical person able to face the social-existential contradictions of the present. The article proposes a new notion of the future as an individual project that encompasses both actions and values. It concludes by discussing personality development under the new social conditions of an absent moral centre.