healthmedicinet

People express their self-identity through their belongings, a notion that psychologists and neuroscientists are lately finding empirical evidence to support, though the idea itself is of course not a new one. In 1890, William James, the 19th-century scholar who is considered by many to be the founder of modern psychology, wrote in The Principles of Modern Psychology, “a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and his children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account.” (Former President Jimmy Carter was a little late to this conclusion, observing in a 1970s speech, “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns.”)