The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

In her memoir, Turkle examines the Lacanian perspective that identity is shaped and re-shaped through language, or the metaphors and ideas that people think with. For example, in the first part of the book, Turkle focuses on her childhood experience of having a plural identity due to her multiple last names. Her mother’s demand that she be a “Zimmerman” at school and a “Turkle” at home gives Turkle an identity crisis, which she carries into adulthood. In her academic life, Turkle is personally drawn to Lacan’s theory of “le nom du père” or “[t]he name of the father” (210, 211), which suggests that the absence of the father’s name, or the way in which the mother uses his name, creates a child’s identity.

Turkle reflects on feeling literally split in her mind between her stepfather, or her “Daddy,” a word which means little to her, and the imagined figure of her biological “father,” who is absent in her life. Her fascination with this split leads her to a career in psychoanalysis, in which a person “talks through” their identity issues. Through her career path, Turkle investigates the way language impacts a person’s inner life. She is influenced by Lacan’s argument that “society constructs the individual through language and therefore we can understand ourselves only in the context of our social surround” (197). By speaking, or writing, about herself, Turkle experiences shifts in her identity.

She embraces the idea that one has a changing self that is made and remade through time and language. Turkle uses this to examine both her personal stages of grief and her understanding of the social selves created in virtual spaces. Turkle refers to the theories of psychologist Erik Erikson, who argues for the plurality of identity over a lifetime: “Erikson’s thinking had been helpful to me during my year in Paris, particularly the idea that identity is constructed and reconstructed over the long haul […] I took comfort in the idea that we each have many chances to rework our identity” (180).

Erikson’s view helps Turkle to accept her initial idolizing of her mother, despite the pain her mother caused her when she was alive. Turkle accepts that her view of her mother will change as she comes across new ideas to think about her with. In the Epilogue, Turkle highlights the outcome of this process of “re-thinking” her mother as greater empathy and gratitude.

Additionally, Turkle uses artificial intelligence and computers to explain the pluralism of identity. She portrays identity as not a singular, “homuncular” core programming but a bunch of different programs that work interdependently. This coincides with how people curate different versions of themselves online in a decentralized manner. She connects Erikson’s vision of the changing self to her own observations: “I watched people cycle through different versions of how they thought about their minds: Freudian-style memory catcher, information processor, and a biological system, ready for chemical manipulation. People now use all of these models, depending on the circumstance” (261). Turkle views the state of identity politics to be moving toward greater and greater plurality.