Severance (TV Show) is a Powerful Exploration of the Lack of a Stable Self

For fans of the show, all will be familiar with the brilliant premise: a process known as ‘Severance’ exists and entails the severance of one’s memories between their inner worker’s life (innie) and their outer life (outie), resulting in two streams of memories that are non-continuous, essentially resulting in two separate identities.

Now, obviously in real life our memory is continuous and not disrupted (beyond sleep), but I think the show, in the figurative sense, perfectly captures the way in which the self lacks stability because it is highly context dependent. We all have ‘outer’ and ‘innie’ selves that fundamentally change depending on the context, even if our memories are continuous and not severed.