Who am I underneath all my roles?
You are one person at work and another at home. With old friends you are someone else again. Most days the roles fit. Then a question shows up: strip them all away, and what's left? Behind it sits a hope that something real is hiding underneath.
Ibsen gave this question one scene.
Peer and the onion
Near the end of the play, Peer Gynt comes back to the Norwegian forest an old man. He has been a gold-digger, a trader, a prophet, a scholar, and an emperor in a madhouse. He finds a wild onion and starts peeling it. Each layer is one of his past lives. He is sure there is a kernel at the center:
"No Kaiser are you; you are nought but an onion."
— Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, Act V, tr. William and Charles Archer
The onion comes apart in his hands. There is no kernel, only layers, each smaller than the last. Peer calls nature witty, throws the pieces away, and decides that thinking only trips a man up.
Found or made
Peer expected to find himself like a pit inside a fruit. Ibsen leaves him empty-handed. Most of the lives Peer peeled off were ones he drifted into. He went where the wind blew and agreed with whoever was in front of him.
The play doesn't say the self is nothing. It says the self isn't lying at the bottom of the pile. If it is anywhere, it is in the moments when a person chose instead of giving way. Peer can barely find one.
Whether you became what others expected is a separate question with its own page. This one is about the hope of a hidden core.
What the scene leaves
Ibsen doesn't hand Peer an answer. He gives him an onion and lets him peel it. The question is left to you: what in your life would only you have done?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.