Wired for Coherence: a Network Theory of Self

People change across daily situations and life transformations, yet maintain a stable sense of self. Explaining this stability requires understanding how identities, traits, values, and memories interact—what changes together, what resists change, and how. We propose that the self is represented as a dynamic causal network of self-aspects linked by beliefs about how they influence one another. Coherence arises when activated self-aspects align with internal beliefs and contextual demands. When disrupted, the network restores coherence through activation shifts that preserve structure or through structural reorganization that reshapes it. This perspective distinguishes the self from associative, categorical, or hierarchical accounts by specifying directional dependencies that constrain change, and highlights how modifying connections among self-aspects promotes coherence and well-being.