Back to Contents

Personal identity is a complex concept, better described as a process.  I will not attempt an in-depth explanation of the process of self-identity in this document because the task is too complex for the available space. For those of you who are interested in a deeper exploration, please read the chapter “Differentiating the I from the ME” (Forster, 2009a) in Reflections in Personal Construct Theory (Butler, 2009).  Click here to download a draft of this chapter

The more simplified definition of strengths-focused identity used in this document is: a person’s personal description of self,  using his or her own words for conveying those self-perceived positive qualities .  This definition does not specify that a person’s strengths-focused identity is synonymous with his or her total identity, which would be nearly impossible to describe because of the complexity of personal identities.  Instead, a person’s strengths-focused identity will be limited to the description of self that a person gives when asked to describe self in terms of personal strengths.

If a person’s self-identity were primarily strengths-focused, that person would think of self mostly in terms of the positive qualities that she or he has articulated during a process like the one described in the book: Articulating Strengths Together (AST): An Interactive Process to Enhance Positivity.