Generative Identity and the Need to Teach

Abstract

Why would the recovery and integration of rejected and marginalized parts of oneself necessarily lead one to become a better teacher, a teacher pursuing more consistently and effectively the aim of benefiting students and society by promoting students’ identity development? After all, the rejected elements of the self include murderous and sadistic urges and desires together with primitive and perverse narcissistic and sexual impulses and fantasies. What is to guarantee that the recovery and integration of the rejected elements of self would not simply turn teachers into sociopaths or sexual predators, rather than more altruistic and benevolent servants to their students and society? Why will owning our narcissism, rage, and libidinal and murderous impulses prevent us from enacting these qualities, but owning our tender impulses will enable and even require us to enact these attributes in a prosocial manner?