Dr Dan Siegel talks to us about IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging.

We are in a moment of challenge and transition that invites each of us to reflect on where humanity is going and how we might choose to support cultural evolution toward a more generative way of living together on Earth. By engaging in a conversation about seeing the self as more than just centered in the body—the “solo-self”—we come to see a more integrative identity and broader belonging as including both the inner Me and the inter We in the intraconnected self of MWe. This is what the new book by Dan Siegel, IntraConnected, is all about.

For more about this book visit Dan’s page here.

For an upcoming conversation between Dan and Iain McGilchrist inquire at mindgains.org

I want to let you know about a book I’ll be releasing in November 2022, IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging. The book explores the fundamental question of how we define who we are—what the “self” is—and proposes that science can now build on what thousands of years of Indigenous and contemplative wisdom traditions from around the globe have taught: Seeing the center of “who we are” as only in the body or bodies like ours—as a “solo-self”—is not only an error, but a dangerous, potentially lethal perspective. Many of the world’s greatest challenges, from racism and social injustice to climate change and polarization, can be seen to be caused by the modern message of self-as-separate. IntraConnected invites us to reflect on the evolution of life and on our own personal journeys across the lifespan as we take a practical yet deep dive into identity and belonging, exploring the science of human development and the way the experience of self emerges in our lives.

As distinct entities, we are indeed interconnected. Yet when seen from the perspective of the whole, what word do we choose? After a retreat alone in the forest for several days, the only term that seemed to fit was not with the inter-prefix, the betweenness of interdependence or interlaced or interconnected, but one that was from the sense of the whole—one that is intraconnected. I’ve had to indicate to my word processor that this is a term that should be placed in the system’s dictionary and not auto-corrected! Woven within this conversation of the book is an invitation to consider how our modern world’s solo-self view may be leading us down a painful path of scarcity and separation, and then how we can find practical and realistic ways to expand the sense, perspective, and agency that make up our center of experience as a self, form our identity, and shape our belonging. We learn to widen an “identity lens” that enables us to shift between an inner Me and a relational We, and when we differentiate and link these—when we integrate them—they combine these into intraconnected MWe.

With much gratitude, Dan