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Over the course of my work I have described the protean self and collective proteanism as expressions of the human capacity for fluidity and many-sided behavior (Lifton 1993). The term derives from the Greek sea god Proteus, a talented and wily shapeshifter. In a recent article in this journal (Lifton 2020) I invoked the idea of proteanism as a form of openness and flexibility, in contrast to the fixity of cultism, and of cultist Trumpism. As I wrote then, “the protean self is many-sided rather than monolithic, resilient rather than unbending. … [and] is consistent with psychological work over recent decades that stresses the self's fluidity rather than fixity (Gergen 1991)” (p. 427).
Yet I have come to recognize that proteanism can have its own conflicts, having to do with the limits and complexities of shapeshifting.
An awkward but pithy personal encounter I had in the 1970s did much to raise the issue for me. At a large academic reception in New York I was accosted by a graduate student who said something like “Hey Lifton, I tried being a protean man and it doesn't work!” While his brashness got my attention, he seemed more disappointed than hostile. I was immediately struck by the problem he raised. My mumbled reply was along the lines of proteanism being a tendency rather than an absolute, which was true enough but hardly an adequate response.
As I thought about the issue the student raised, I remembered an essay I had read by Lewis Mumford (1964), the humanist and social critic, on the subject of Freud and Jung. He told how each man in lonely isolation—Freud late at night in his study in Vienna, and Jung in his Bollingen