Could a person migrate from one human body to another, as some movies suggest (e.g. Freaky Friday)?

You wake up in a stranger’s bed. Staring into a mirror, you see a face that is not yours—a face society treats with disdain, desire, or indifference. Your memories, convictions, and very self remain intact, but the world now responds to you as someone entirely new. This is the existential vertigo at the heart of bodily migration media like Freaky Friday, asking: if your consciousness leaped into another body, would you still be you? It slices to the core of one of philosophy’s oldest puzzles—what defines a person? 

This essay explores the concept of personal identity, examining whether John Locke’s “psychological continuity” can survive a new body and adapt to societal gaze. For the purpose of this essay, we assume mind-body dualism and that our mind could migrate into a new body, along with our memories and experiences. In doing so, it will investigate whether Freaky Friday offers a philosophically adequate account of personhood or merely scratches the surface of deeper existential questions.

According to John Locke, a “person” is the forensic and moral concept of consciousness and self-reflection. Similar to “man,” which refers to a human organism characterized by biological continuity, Locke states that a person can ‘consider itself as itself, the same thinning thing, in different times and places.’ It seems like he is saying a person can retain their unique “personhood” after migrating to a new human body. This essay would argue that personhood is a socially contingent construct, reshaped by the scrutinizing gaze of societal norms and power structures; as institutions and individuals categorize, judge, and interact with the body, the self becomes a hybrid of internal psychological continuity and external imposition of assumptions, rendering identity a battleground of recognition rather than sovereign truth.

John Locke explains his idea of consciousness and personhood in the ‘Prince and the Cobbler’ example. He asked the reader to imagine the mind of a prince entering the body of a cobbler, along with all his so-called “princely thoughts.” He would refuse to bend down to measure the foot size of “his” customers because the conscious self of the prince, with all the memories that define him, persists. Locke believes consciousness is entirely internal, focusing on one’s mental processes, distinct from sensory perception. It is linked to memory, suggesting that our ability to recall past experiences manifests in the continuity of our consciousness. Identity then persists through a chain of interconnected memories. 

Although Locke’s definition of identity as memory may be initially appealing, it is philosophically problematic, falling short of several logical fallacies. First, Locke defines identity via memory, but memory presupposes a prior self. That is to say, to remember an experience, there must already be a “self” that had the experience. For example, if you remember yourself eating pancakes in the morning, Locke would say this memory confirms your identity as the same person who ate the pancakes. But the act of remembering presupposes that the person who ate the pancakes was already the same person as you. In addition, Locke assumed the “self” has to be the same “self.” However, Heraclitus says, ’a man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.’ It is intuitive that everything in the world is in flux and everchanging. The river will not be exactly the same because it has experienced different things: the water, the fish, and the temperature have changed; nor will you because your feelings, thoughts, and experiences will be different too. Therefore, Lock’s argumentation is circular because it assumes a stable self to validate memory, while memory is supposed to define that very self. Unless the self remains constant—which it can’t—memory cannot serve as reliable evidence of personhood.

Moreover, what about lost memory or false memory? At age 14, you might remember something that happened to you at age 5, but at age 42, you might only remember something that happened to you at age 14. Your brain can also trick you with false memories about things that happened. For example, your brain can make up a memory of you at a young age based on a story you’ve been told, even though you don’t actually remember experiencing it. Following Locke’s logic, the 42-year-old and the 14-year-old are different people because they have different memories. But it does not seem like the case. Professor Peter Milligan, in his speech Problems for Locke’s View of Personal Identity, states that the ancestral chain of memory continues your identity. This means that you do not need to remember every past experience directly. It is enough if your present self remembers a time—like yesterday—when you did remember the day before. This indirect continuity, linking each moment through overlapping memories, creates a chain that sustains personhood over time, even when direct recollections fail.

Even if we disregard the logical gaps in Locke’s theory, we must also acknowledge that personhood is shaped by external scrutiny and our position in society. Imagine yourself as a 50-year-old CEO in finance. You have authority, power, fame, and money in that position. Suddenly, you find yourself trapped in the body of your young intern, a girl who just graduated from university, dismissed as naive, emotional, and less. Of course, you still remember boardroom strategies, stock portfolios, and the meeting content you held with your shareholders yesterday, but the world now greets you with condescension, not deference. Then, is personhood a private essence or a performance set by the body’s stage? Henri Tajfel, in his social identity theory, argues that humans categorize others based on visible traits such as race, gender, and age. The CEO’s authority comes from being a middle-aged man, and the consequent unique experiences that shaped his memory are influenced by his social profile. The CEO would be expected to perform femininity, and his memory changes as his social identity changes. 

Personhood thus extends beyond how others view oneself. Georg Hegel claims that self-consciousness requires acknowledgment by others. If society denies his identity, his selfhood is destabilized. This is because we craft our identities using social validation, forming our consciousness, memory, and experience. The lack of social mirroring—when society no longer reflects back the identity he holds of himself—erodes his original identity, even with intact memories. One might argue that the CEO can remain the same person internally. Yet, without social agency, his identity becomes abstract and altered—a “ghost” in a foreign body. Thus, psychological continuity may be necessary but insufficient for personhood. Personhood emerges from both memory and the social-physical matrix, the interplay of relationships, cultural contexts, and social norms.

In conclusion, personhood cannot be sustained when migrated from one human body to another, as depicted in Freaky Friday. John Locke may be correct in saying that personhood persists if memory and consciousness can be successfully transferred to the new body. However, this account is insufficient. Memory is not static but reinterpreted through current social contexts, suggesting that personhood is a fluid interplay of internal and external factors. Hence, the second the consciousness is in the new body, they are no longer the old self.