Like many other psychological traits, the simplest way to measure your level of identification is by assessing to what extent you agree to some strongly correlated statements.
Since overidentification is, to the best of my knowledge, a novel concept, the only correlative data to work with is that from my own experience. Naturally, this limits the test’s assessment potential, and consequently the reliability of the results.
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This is a background article on the test introduced in my opening article about ‘overidentification.’ You can find it here.
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The identification test consists of 10 statements that present a particular symptom of identification (see below for a further elaboration for each statement). How often a person feels he or she identifies with that statement is expected to provide a useful quantitative measure of that person’s susceptibility to (over)identification.
Identification, as explained in my other article, is not necessarily a bad thing. It is through identification that we manifest our ability to empathize with others and to navigate ourselves successfully in a social environment. The issue arises when the identification with others persistently overrides our own feelings, and consequently our needs. Or alternatively, when we lack the ability to identify with others altogether.
The below graph illustrates the dominance of the selfconsciousness for different proportions of otherconsciousness (see the background article for an explanation of these concepts). A low degree of selfconsciousness implies a high degree of otherconsciousness and vice versa. At the middle point, the otherconsciousness is, on average, dominant just as often as the selfconsciousness.
This graph is useful, as it allows us to imagine some critical regions.
Above the middle-point, we find the region where the otherconsciousness is dominant most of the time. This means that our decisions are predominantly influenced by our construct of the other in our mind. Given that self-care should be our first priority, residing in the region would range from undesirable (near the middle-point) toward problematic or critical at the outer end.
Below the middle point, we find the space in which the selfconsciousness is dominant, but the otherconsciousness might play an (increasingly diminishing) role. At the outer end, we find another critical point. Located in this area we find the person that has very little capacity for mentally conceiving the other person’s point-of-view. Ultimately, we could imagine here the sociopath, who lacks any capacity for empathy.
Accurately defining critical regions would require extensive clinical study. However, based on the aforementioned I will conceive 5 regions of interest, shown in the graph below.