This is an excellent question that goes to the core of neoliberalism.

Self-expression, be yourself, I need to find out who I am, be your most authentic self – these are the manifestations of the very heart of the neoliberal subjectivity.

Here’s how it works.

You are a business. And you are also the manager of that business. It’s your duty to manage the business that is yourself in the best, most rational manner. You must control each aspect of your business and manage it successfully.

In the above statement we already see the seeds of an unsolvable problem. How can you be both the subject and the object of that subject’s actions? If the self is the business, then who manages it? Another self? Or the same one? As we optimize our productivity techniques, track our time to improve output, manage our sleep, extract all the potential we can from our intellectual and psychological resources while working to replenish them as we go, the split deepens between “I as the manager who is perennially unhappy with the underperforming worker” and “I as the underperforming worker who perennially fails to satisfy the demanding manager.”

The more successful one is at the neoliberal game, the deeper the rift. What am I, the business or its manager? The punisher or the punished? The owner or the resource?

The endless prattle about the true self and the need to express this true self is a manifestation of the efforts to heal that rift. They will always fail but they do bring temporary relief.

Brilliant question, thank you!