Volume 10 - Number 4 - March 2004
Pages: 121 - 162
Elovitz, P. H. (2004). E-mail identities. Clio’s Psyche, 10(4), 153-154.
E-mail Identities
Abstract
In this article, the author considers the e-mail addresses, or handles, that young people, mostly aged 18 to 25, choose as statements about their identity. He begins from the observation that people do not ordinarily name themselves and refers to Erik Erikson’s writing on identity. The examples come from a small number of people he has had contact with over one or two years, and he reports disguising the addresses. He sorts the handles into categories, among them ethnic identity, food, gender, mood, nature, nicknames, self-image, profession, hobbies, animals, and togetherness with a partner. He asks whether a shared-names address, which in his limited sample belongs to women, might be an e-mail equivalent of a wedding ring. He reports that his first guesses about a handle’s meaning were often mistaken, as when owners explained theirs by a profession, a book, or a teenage wish to convey two qualities at once. He also notes gender-neutral handles, people who use more than one address, and an acquaintance whose changing gender presentation was accompanied by a new name in the address. He recounts finding that psychohistory-themed AOL handles were already taken, mostly by admirers of Isaac Asimov’s fictional psychohistory, which led to the Clio’s Psyche special issue “Freud and Asimov: Two Very Different ‘Psychohistories.'” He closes with his own address as a reflection of a lifelong identity, with less imagination than the young people’s.
body size, e-mail identities, Erik Erikson, family dynamics, identity, psychohistory, separate identity
Normally, people do not get to name themselves. Parents choose our names and I have known individuals who have rued the parental choices they carried throughout their lives. To their minds, their names (and often their body sizes, features, etc., etc.) are too common, uncommon, interesting, or dull. Few among us have not had a friend or relative who has not spent endless hours complaining of the misfortune of having a name or face that was not masculine or feminine enough, handsome or pretty enough. In my experience, such discontents are sometimes a part of our way of establishing a separate identity from that of our family which named us and passed on their body sizes and looks. When Erik Erikson wrote so insightfully about issues of identity, I doubt that he imagined that there would be such a fruitful way of trying on different identities as there are on e-mail.
On e-mail, we have the choice of totally reinventing ourselves as whatever we would like and in being perceived by people who have never met us in person as whoever our new name implies. This process can make for all sorts of transformations that would be either difficult or impossible in reality. The media focuses on cases of pedophiles or scam artists who create false identities used for immoral/unscrupulous purposes. My interest is in how young people, mostly 18-25, make statements about their identity in choosing e-mail addresses. In this article I write about some of the e-mail identities taken by people in this age group with whom I have had some contact in the last year or two. It is amazing to me that all of these examples come from a fairly small number of individuals. To protect the identity of those involved, I have disguised the addresses of the server and sometimes made changes without disrupting the essence of the address. For example, “@aol.com” may be changed to “@com cast.net” or “@juno.com” and “psyhhstfm3@juno” would be altered to something like “Psychohistory Forum27@aol.com.” Numbers may be changed or added to further disguise an address and often vowels are added. Note that e-mail addresses had been limited to eight spaces before the “@” until fairly recently, and they now appear to be limited to 13 characters. However, for the sake of clarity I have lengthened them and added vowels which are often eliminated for the purposes of space. I have also added capitalization to make it easier for the reader who is unfamiliar with e-mail to read the component parts. Thus becomes AwayWithWords22@netmail.com.
I find that e-mail addresses (“handles”) can be organized under many different categories such as: anti-intellectual(AwayWithWords22@netmail.com), ethnic identity and Fight-enIrish253@ru.edu ), food (Cookies736@netmail.com), gender (BabyGurl 03579@hotmail.com), mood and ImAlmostHappy33@aol.com), nature (Red Sands834@aol.com), nicknames (Honey and for an individual with a name like Wagnert), personal characteristic (PeachyChicOne@aol.com), self-image and Vanity97@telus planet.net), profession (NurseNumber1@juno.com), prophecy (shaman ), and worth (BillDaBest721@rr.com). Togetherness with a loved one and GeorgeAndAnna@yahoo.com) is not uncommon and in my limited sample it has been women who have these e-mail addresses. Could such an address be an e-mail equivalent of an engagement or wedding ring?
Hobbies are important and sometimes even lead to professions: loves to swim, is a swimming instructor, and PonyGirlRac likes horses and is training to be a nurse. Animal names also serve as ways of establishing identity: and MonkeyFreak are straight forward examples, while is based on half of the individual’s last name and man’s best friend.
My first hypothesis about the meaning of an Internet handle is often not what the creator of the e-mail address had in mind. For example, IrisIn had a hard time concentrat-
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ing on her schoolwork because of disruptions in her personal life, so I wondered if her e-mail was a reflection of a psychic balance she was trying to achieve. When I inquired about why she choose this address, she gave me her business card while stating that she was a physical therapist who helped balance the bodies of her clients. When I read the address I assumed that some sort of a kiss was the main thing on her mind in devising it. However, she reports that in creating it as a fifteen year old she was not thinking so much of kissing in the sexual sense, as of something that would both convey “strange/weird” (“twisted”) and “sweet/cute” (“a kiss”). Gender neutrality is common in e-mail handles: could be Christina, but it is for Christopher, is the address of Melissa rat h er than Melvin, is Patrick’s rather than Patricia’s address, and comes from Robyn rather than Robert.
There are also issues of multiple and changing identities. also wrote me from the e-mail . I wondered if he was thinking of joining the army, the National Guard, or a militia group, but he told me that the address was inspired by a book on WWII soldiers and that he wanted to convey something about personal struggle, in the sense of “soldiering through life.”
Sometimes more than an e-mail address changes in the search for a comfortable identity. Several years ago my sense of gender identity was confused by a young person with a gender neutral name who worked in the college cafeteria. The first day I saw him he looked male and the next day, and mostly thereafter, he appeared at work dressed as a female who was slightly in need of a shave. S/he was singularly uncommunicative and when I asked a question about the food it felt like s/he was going to bite. Before too long, the public presentation of this quite visible person settled in a female persona. The school scuttlebutt is that electrolysis and estrogen treatments helped to clarify the identity. A few months ago when chatting with her in a lounge area, I received an approving nod of agreement when I commented that she seemed to be much more relaxed than she had been the year before. When I asked her for an e-mail address, it included a totally different, quite feminine name within it.
It was through my work in psychohistory that I first used e-mail and I wanted an e-mail address that reflected my several decades of psychohistorical research and writing. To my astonishment America Online (AOL) e-mail handles conveying the word psychohistory were already taken and yet I did not know or know of the people involved. Before long I discovered that the e-mailer’s using them were mostly inspired by Isaac Asimov’s fantasy psychohistory. This stimulated the Clio’s Psyche special issue, “Freud and Asimov: Two Very Different ‘Psychohistories,’” (Vol. 5, no. 1: pp. 1, 15-38) to better understand the imaginary psychohistory of a most prolific author. I will conclude with my own e-mail address of pelovitz@aol.com. It reflects a lifelong identity, but little of the imagination of so many of the young people who have come of age in an era of Internet identity.
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How to cite this article
Elovitz, P. H. (2004). E-mail identities. Clio’s Psyche, 10(4), 153-154.
