There is the psychology of such a projective test - "Who am I?" Invented by M. kun and T. Mcpartland in 1954. A very simple test, the person is asked to give yourself at least twenty definitions. Based on the responses received, judged on what identity a priority. For example, at what place a person is of his nationality, citizenship, profession, region of residence, race, sex, etc. Strictly speaking, the most important is the first three to five positions, for him it becomes clear - people who consider themselves to be in the first place. For example, Americans in the first position consistently placed civil identity ("I am American," "I - a citizen of the United States," etc.), professional affiliation, and race. Our priorities - family identity (son/ daughter, brother/ sister, father/ mother, husband/ wife...), professional, and large-regional ("Siberian", "Ural"). Nationality and citizenship are usually or do not remember at all, or placed in the "basement" of the list.

But we have one identity that puzzles me for ten years, and that foreign studies (at least known to me) does not appear at all, i.e., absolutely, and in our surveys consistently takes first or second place. This is the answer: "I - man". And is more than any exceptional ability of our people to reasoning from the General to the particular (deduction). We like all the time insist on this, approved it, emphasize it, prove it - I'm a man! Who, one wonders, proved. And why, actually, do it?

More confusion makes the fact that all identity, as a rule, are emotionally going through, well, people can be proud that they are the Man!, or Woman! White or black, Siberian or Texan, doctor or businessman. We usually are experiencing and their family identity, more often, warm and positive - mother... father... husband... grandma... Relate emotionally and with his nationality or the nation - in one direction or another can be proud of, but I can confutatis depends on self-perception and the political, economic, and cultural background. Emotional context is associated with the fact that our identities are always vis - Nasobirali (yuck!), Nechemya (BRR!), The citizens of our great country (any!), Nemwiki (cough, cough), etc., and this is understandable, because "we" all the way was better than "them", in every sense. But what we can experience emotions about what we humans, and comparing ourselves to others, we make such a statement?

Who - vis man? A monkey? Raccoon? Mouse shrew? You really can be proud that you're not a possum? Such experiences are available only Terry Buddhists, who remember their previous incarnations, not all of which were human. The Buddha himself, they say, remembered his 550 past lives, where he visited a duck, and a turtle, and a dog... Well, Gautam was with what to compare, and with what or whom we compare ourselves we are ordinary unenlightened? Is it even possible some feelings about the fact that we - the people? If possible, why? If impossible, why do we persistently prescribe themselves "first lines" of these tests - people?

Then, of course, immediately to mind comes the stormy Petrel Gorky with his "we Must respect the man! To spare... not to humiliate him too bad. it is necessary to respect!". So, we have this historic aggravation? And the call to respect still in the force? But such a powerful request happens only when the same deficiency. Well, our people do not feel people? That is, feel their insignificance, realize that they are the ones not considered, do not perceive their living conditions as "human"?

Well aware that the number of people requiring psychological assistance far exceeds the number who applied for it. Sick society... Not too banal conclusion? Maybe. But when we come to reception people is not superfluous to remember that in addition to explicit individual symptoms, he drags behind him all the society he desperately wants to live and feel like human beings, and that these needs are somehow stable frustrare. In General, "let's Drink to man, Baron!"