Survival without personal identity?

An example from Proust, Remembrance of Things Past


The self treated as a succession of selves, which are distinct entities whose
memories overlap. 
The self having the kind of identity that the French nation has. Louis XIV's
France has some connection with France today. 

Proust here describes a narrator who has a conflict. He wants to write, but feels
also social obligations coming out of his earlier life in society. As he
describes this situation, there really are two selves. 

"One of my selves, the one which in the past had been in the habit of going to
those barbarian festivals that we call dinner-parties... this one of my selves
had retained its scruples and lost its memory. The other self, the one which had
had a glimpse of the task that lay before it (writing a novel), on the contrary
still remembered"

"the forgetful self... was able to dominate the other."


A similar example from the German composer Hans Werner Henze, describing himself
when you from the perspective of old age:


:How frivolous... we had been during those carefree years in the late fifties and
early sixties when we had all been ... happy ... and could not get our fill of
adventures, conquests and sleepless nights. We now talked about these follies as
though we were discussing events and people that we had barely known in person."

Boheniam Fifths: An Autobiography (1999)