No fixed view of our reality can do justice to its features, for those features change in their meaning and significance depending on the perspective that is taken. This entire argument about a dramaturgical approach to psychology is nothing but a perspective, a particular point of view brought to bear on our subject matter -- ourselves and the world we live in. The special advantage of this perspective is that it enables us to see the intimate connections between the drama of everyday lives and our psychological processes-- our perceiving, thinking, social relations-- and our pathologies. An unsatisfactory view of reality is one that cannot shift perspectives-- so that one stands all of the time in the same box. No transformations, no drama, and the result is predictable and boring.
I have visited boxes of slam poets, square dancers, skeet shooters, schizophrenics, alcoholics, drug addicts, deconstructionists, missionaries, fishermen and farmers, football players, sports car buffs, bagpipe players, and country clubbers -- boxes of Carnaval-jumping Brazilians, fraternity pledges, and church deacons as well as psychologists and professors of various sorts. If you are blessed with a reasonabley long life, you will compile your own interesting list of boxes-- little theaters wherein the play is earnest and the players all convinced of their grasp on reality.
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