The concept of 'ego permeability'

The concept of 'ego permeability' is the idea that one is more able to tune into another culture if one is less rigid about one's own. It is as if the boundaries of a person's language ego need to become flexible in order to allow the language learner to move comfortably between their own language identity and that of the target language. Ingram (1981:44) defines ego permeability as 'the extent to which [a person] can modify what he [sic] sees as his personal characteristics (including language characteristics) to act in a different way when operating in another culture or using another language'.
To what extent does your experience of learning or teaching a language support this?