At any one time there is a particular set of implicit assumptions about where and who you are and associated experiential verifications, which constitutes the home key of the self. You could call it a state as well, but perhaps more in the sense of a set of statutes than of mental calibrations along various sliding scales. Another term might be crystallisation, with again the connotation that you are confined to looking through the crystal, that you accept its perspectives and superimposed reflections, refractions and parallaxes as the basic expression of what you are. In waking consciousness this is a particularly rigid structure, as it needs to be to optimise your assumed position as a kind of subject-object in the world; it includes the currently and tactically updated catalogue of what you can be most and least sure of and everything in-between, of the hard regions and the soft regions. Of course, it is subject to radical changes in the course of any day, but you are not aware of these changes as such. It is as if each distinct formation is a mask with which you are seamlessly identified. You do not see your own face, but you are aware of the faces that are not you and each has its own physiognomy, recognised but alien, closed to empathy. The nature of the self as a product of consciousness is thus limited by the band in which it achieves its working crystallisation, instead of being located further upstream where it might include the variability inherent in its potential responsiveness - such as may be apparent to the more fluid kind of consciousness in dreaming. All of this points to the role of disavowal as a primary defense mechanism. You don't disavow thoughts, but the bearer of certain thoughts, as if it was someone you could reject, and in this way sparing yourself from any awareness of what this other self might see and know.