The social roots of human identity and the interplay of the selves

In this paper, two main aspects of Cristina Meini’s From Cradle to Internet. The Social Nature 11 of Personal Identity are taken into consideration. In the first place, Meini’s argument concerning the struc-12 turing role for self development of caregivers’ communicative mirroring is analysed in the light of current 13 literature concerning the multi-layered architecture of identity. I propose to integrate Meini’s interesting 14 socio-cultural perspective with a dialectical view of the interaction between fundamental self-monitoring 15 mechanisms addressing bodily self-awareness. This integration widely relies on the most recent contribu-16 tions from Peter Fonagy’s model of mentalization deficits studied in the clinical field of personality disor-17 ders. In the second section of the comment, I present some possible ways to tackle the problem of “ex-18 tended mind” through internet devices raised by Meini. In particular, the notion of extended mind is con-19 fronted with the specificities of identity building in the use of social networks.