Ted Newcomb and Ted Sarbin were instrumental in introducing the concept of social role into psychology from sociology. One of Sarbin’s lasting contributions was to distinguish between role playing (acting as if one were the occupant of a social position) and role taking (believing that one is and conducting one’s self in the capacity of being the legitimate occupant of a social position). This is a common sense distinction, and one that has had and continues to have significant utility in social psychology.
It is an everyday observation that it is easy to slide from playing at something to doing something; it is far more difficult to turn a serious doing into playacting. It is also far more common to become serious about something one is playing at than to turn serious activity into pretending. It is as if one slowly and often inadvertently becomes the person whom one has been pretending to be. One imagines that this happens to spies, double agents, people who live double or multiple lives, hypocrites, in other words, of all sorts. One can think of the character Tartuffe http://www.miracletheatre.co.uk/sites/default/files/imagecache/showimagesquare/sites/default/files/files/posters/Tartuffe-current-show.jpg.
In my reply to Lester Shepard’s comment on my previous blog, I said
I am not as struck by the apparent fact that the psychiatrist-shooter at Fort Hood was a devout Muslim--as that he was a devout observant member of one of the Abrahamic faiths. It seems to me that psychiatry (his profession) (and psychology) have long been on a crusade to eradicate religion as a form of infantile superstition--if not worse. I do think that it is still difficult to differentiate hallucinations and delusions (as defined by official psychiatry or psychology) from visions or apparitions, or for that matter some forms of religious faith.
One merely needs to scratch the surface of the narrative the press has been unfolding about the lives and times of Nidal Malik Hasan to bare the horrific role conflicts he subjected himself to. The multiple contradictory roles and role expectations suggest a person who for whatever reason undertook to play some roles—only to discover the mask had become a distorted nightmare face attached to his own grinning skull. That berserker avenger—was he enticed—or did he merely entice himself to don the mask that had adhered to his skins and bones by the time he rampaged? How healthy is it to pretend; to self deceive?
