Psychology of self

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The psychology of self is the study of either the cognitive, conative or affective representation of one's identity, or the subject of experience. The earliest form of the Self in modern psychology saw the emergence of two elements, I and me, with I referring to the Self as the subjective knower and me referring to the Self as a subject that is known. [1]

Contents

The Self has long been considered as the central element and support of any experience. [2] The Self is not 'permanently stuck into the heart of consciousness'. "I am not always as intensively aware of me as an agent, as I am of my actions. That results from the fact that I perform only part of my actions, the other part being conducted by my thought, expression, practical operations, and so on." [2]

Current views of the Self in psychology position it as playing an integral part in human motivation, cognition, affect, and social identity. [3] It may be the case that we can now successfully attempt to create experiences of the Self in a neural process with cognitive consequences, which will give us insight into the elements that compose the complex selves of modern identity.

Overtime, different theorists from multiple schools of thought have created ideas of what makes up the Self. Out of these schools, major theorists in the Clinical and Sociological branches of Psychology have emerged.

In Clinical Psychology

Jungian's Self Archetype

Carl Jung in 1935 ETH-BIB-Jung, Carl Gustav (1875-1961)-Portrait-Portr 14163 (cropped).tif
Carl Jung in 1935

In classical Jungian analysis, the Self is the culmination of several archetypes, [4] which are predispositions of how a person responds to the world. [5] The Self signifies the coherent whole, unifying both the conscious and unconscious mind of a person. [4] The Self, according to Jung, is the most important and difficult archetype to understand. [6] [5] It is fully realized as the product of individuation, which is defined by Jung as the rebirth of the Ego back to the original self. [4]

The Self, besides being the center of the psyche, is also autonomous, meaning that it exists outside of time and space. Jung also called the Self an imago Dei . The Self is the source of dreams and often appears as an authority figure in dreams with the ability to perceive events not yet occurred or guide one in the present. [7]

(See also: Sigmund Freud & Personality)

Kohut's Formulation

Kohut followed Freud's line of thinking regard the Self. However, he deviates from Freud by theorizing that the Self puts energy into the idea of narcissism (See Cathexis). [8] The system is then broken over time into initially two systems of narcissistic perfection: 1) a system of ambitions (the grandiose self) and, 2) a system of ideals (the idealized parent imago). [8] According to Kohut, these two systems represent the poles within Kohut's bipolar self. These poles work with each other to maintain a balance that is referred to as the Self [8]

Winnicott's Selves

Donald Winnicott distinguished what he called the "true self" from the "false self" in the human personality, considering the true self as one based on the individual's sense of being, not doing, something which was rooted in the experiencing body. [9]

Nevertheless, Winnicott did not undervalue the role of the false self in the human personality, regarding it as a necessary form of defensive organization similar to that of a caretaker that protects the true self hides behind so that it may continue to exist. [10]

Five levels of false self-organization were identified by Winnicott, running along a kind of continuum. [11]

  1. In the most severe instance, the false self completely replaces and ousts the true self, leaving the latter a mere possibility. [12]
  2. Less severely, the false self protects the true self, which remains unactualized.
  3. Closer to health, the false self supports the individual's search for conditions that will allow the true self to recover its own identity.
  4. Even closer to health, we find the false self "... established on the basis of identifications". [13]
  5. Finally, in a healthy person, the false self is composed of that which facilitates social behavior, the manners and courtesy that allows for a smooth social life, with emotions expressed in socially acceptable forms. [11]

As for the true self, Winnicott linked it to playing "hide and seek"' designed to protect one's real self against exploitation, [14] without entirely forfeiting the ability to relate to others. [15]

Berne's Transactional Analysis

Eric Berne in 1969 Eric Berne 1969.jpg
Eric Berne in 1969

In his transactional analysis theory Eric Berne distinguished the personality's ego states - Parent, Adult and Child - from what he called 'the real self, the one that can move from one ego state to another'. [16]

Berne considered that 'the feeling of "Self" is a mobile one. It can reside in any of the three ego states at any given moment, and can jump from one to the other as occasion arises'. [18]

A person's tone, gestures, choice of words, posture, and emotional state can portray which ego state they are currently in. By knowing about their own ego states, a person can use each one in particular situations in order to enhance their experience or make new social connections.

Berne saw the Self as the most valuable part of the personality: 'when people get to know each other well, they penetrate into the depths where this real Self resides, and that is the part of the other person they respect and love' [19]


(See Also: Carl Rogers)

In Social Psychology

Social psychology acknowledges that "one of the most important life tasks each a person faces is understanding who they are and how they feel about themselves". [20] This allows us to better understand ourselves, abilities, and preferences so that a person can make choices and decisions that suit them the best. [20] However, rather than absolute knowledge, it would seem that 'a healthy sense of Self calls for both accurate self-knowledge and protective self-enhancement, in just the right amounts at just the right times.' [21]

Other schools of thought look at the Self from a Social Psychology perspective. Some are listed below.

The Self is an automatic part of every human being that enables them to relate to others. The self is made up of three main parts that allow for the Self to maintain its function: Self-knowledge, the interpersonal self, and the agent self. [22]

Self-knowledge

Self-knowledge is something many seek to understand. In knowing about their selves, a person is more capable of knowing how to be socially acceptable and desirable. They seek out self-knowledge due to the appraisal motive, self-enhancement motive, and consistency motive.

Self-knowledge is sometimes referred to as self-concept. This feature allows for people to gather information and beliefs about themselves. A person's self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-deception all fall under the self-knowledge part of self. People learn about themselves through our looking-glass selves, introspection, social comparisons, and self-perception. [22]

Interpersonal Self

The Interpersonal self, also known as the public self, refers to the part of the self that can be seen by other members of society. [22] Because society has "unwritten rules", a person may find themselves in a specific role that adheres to these rules and expected behaviors…

Agent Self (non self)

The agent self is known as the executive function that allows for actions. This is how a person make choices and maintains control in situations and actions. The agent self resides over everything that involves decision making, self-control, taking charge in situations, and actively responding. [22]

George-Mead & Charles Clooney

Symbolic interactionism stresses the 'social construction of an individual's sense of self' through two main methods: 'In part the self emerges through interaction with others....But the self is a product of social structure as well as of face-to-face interaction'. [24] This aspect of social psychology emphasizes the theme of mutual constitution of the person and situation. [25] Instead of focusing on the levels of class, race, and gender structure, this perspective seeks to understand the self in the way an individual lives their life on a moment-by-moment basis. [26]

Self as an Emergent Phenomena

In dynamical social psychology as proposed by Nowak et al., [27] the self is rather an emergent property that emerges as an experiential phenomena from the interaction of psychological perceptions and experiences. This is also hinted in dynamical evolutionary social psychology where a set of decision rules generates complex behavior. [28]

Memory and the Self

Martin A. Conway

Memory and the self are interconnected to the point that they can be defined as the Self-Memory System (SMS). The self is viewed as a combination of memories and self-images (working self). Conway proposes that a person's long-term memory and working self are dependent on each other. Our prior knowledge of our self puts constraints on what our working self is and the working self modifies the access to our long-term memory and what it consists of. [29]

John Locke

One view of the Self that follows the thinking of John Locke, sees it as a product of episodic memory. [30] It has been suggested that transitory mental constructions within episodic memory form a self-memory system that grounds the goals of the working self, [30] but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge, [31] and semantic facts, and so conceptual knowledge rather than episodic memory. [31]

Both episodic and semantic memory systems have been proposed to generate a sense of self-identity: personal episodic memory enables the phenomenological continuity of identity, while personal semantic memory generates the narrative continuity of identity. [32] "The nature of personal narratives depends on highly conceptual and ‘story-like' information about one's life, which resides at the general event level of autobiographical memory and is thus unlikely to rely on more event-specific episodic systems." [32]

See also

Related Research Articles

In philosophy, the self is the relationship of an individual's own being, knowledge and values. Self relates the experiences of one's inner and outer living in presence.

Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attitude (psychology)</span> Concept linking cognitive processes to behavior

An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind." Attitudes include beliefs (cognition), emotional responses (affect) and behaviors. In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Winnicott</span> English pediatrician and psychoanalyst

Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytical Society, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society twice, and a close associate of Marion Milner.

Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were.

In the psychology of self, one's self-concept is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?".

Self-knowledge is a term used in psychology to describe the information that an individual draws upon when finding answers to the questions "What am I like?" and "Who am I?".

Self-referential encoding is a method of organizing information in one's memory in which one interprets incoming information in relation to oneself, using one's self-concept as a background. Examples include being able to attribute personality traits to oneself or to identify recollected episodes as being personal memories of the past. The implications of self-referential processing are evident in many psychological phenomena. For example, the "cocktail party effect" notes that people attend to the sound of their names even during other conversation or more prominent, distracting noise. Also, people tend to evaluate things related to themselves more positively. For example, people tend to prefer their own initials over other letters. The self-reference effect (SRE) has received the most attention through investigations into memory. The concepts of self-referential encoding and the SRE rely on the notion that relating information to the self during the process of encoding it in memory facilitates recall, hence the effect of self-reference on memory. In essence, researchers have investigated the potential mnemonic properties of self-reference.

Self psychology, a modern psychoanalytic theory and its clinical applications, was conceived by Heinz Kohut in Chicago in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and is still developing as a contemporary form of psychoanalytic treatment. In self psychology, the effort is made to understand individuals from within their subjective experience via vicarious introspection, basing interpretations on the understanding of the self as the central agency of the human psyche. Essential to understanding self psychology are the concepts of empathy, selfobject, mirroring, idealising, alter ego/twinship and the tripolar self. Though self psychology also recognizes certain drives, conflicts, and complexes present in Freudian psychodynamic theory, these are understood within a different framework. Self psychology was seen as a major break from traditional psychoanalysis and is considered the beginnings of the relational approach to psychoanalysis.

Splitting is the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative qualities of something into a cohesive, realistic whole. It is a common defense mechanism wherein the individual tends to think in extremes. This kind of dichotomous interpretation is contrasted by an acknowledgement of certain nuances known as "shades of gray".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subpersonality</span> Personality mode allowing a person to cope with psychosocial situations

A subpersonality is, in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology and ego psychology, a personality mode that activates to allow a person to cope with certain types of psychosocial situations. Similar to a complex, the mode may include thoughts, feelings, actions, physiology and other elements of human behavior to self-present a particular mode that works to negate particular psychosocial situations. American transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber and English humanistic psychologist John Rowan suggested that the average person has about a dozen subpersonalities.

Autobiographical memory (AM) is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory. It is thus a type of explicit memory.

Individuals often maintain different versions of themselves in different types of relationships, such as in familial, romantic, and professional relationships. Within each type of relationship, the way an individual acts can change because of the varied nature of each of these relationships. Many describe these different behaviors as "fake selves" used to maintain certain impressions. The term Crystallized Self states that if there are no fake or real selves, then the self must be crystallized, and doesn't change based on who the individual is interacting with. This concept is the preface to the idea of crystallized behavior. The nature of this type of behavior is fluid, multidimensional, and complex. Described experientially, it is when an individual alters their behavior, language, and identity depending on the context with which they are interacting. The Crystallized Self includes ideas of (1) disciplining; (2) multiple facets of identity; (3) the gendered work involved in boundary-spanning; critical intersectionality; and (5) qualitative research. These bring into question how "fluid" our selves can possibly be. Understanding the different dimensions of identity and self has been a continuously researched topic. Dr. Peter Burke, a professor in Cambridge University, stated, "Identities tell us who we are and they announce to others who we are... Identities subsequently guide behavior, leading "fathers" to behave like "fathers" and "nurses" to act like "nurses.""

The concept of excessive selfishness has been recognized throughout history. The term "narcissism" is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus, but was only coined at the close of the nineteenth century.

The persona, for Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—"a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual."

Self-realization is a term used in Western psychology, philosophy, and spirituality; and in Indian religions. In the Western understanding, it is the "fulfillment by oneself of the possibilities of one's character or personality". In the Indian understanding, self-realization is liberating knowledge of the true Self, either as the permanent undying Purusha or witness-consciousness, which is atman (essence), or as the absence (sunyata) of such a permanent Self.

The true self and the false self are a psychological dualism conceptualized by English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Winnicott used "true self" to denote a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, having a real self with little to no contradiction. "False self", by contrast, denotes a sense of self created as a defensive façade, which in extreme cases can leave an individual lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty behind an inconsistent and incompetent appearance of being real, such as in narcissism.

Autonoetic consciousness is the human ability to mentally place oneself in the past and future or in counterfactual situations, and to thus be able to examine one's own thoughts.

In psychology, narcissistic withdrawal is a stage in narcissism and a narcissistic defense characterized by "turning away from parental figures, and by the fantasy that essential needs can be satisfied by the individual alone". In adulthood, it is more likely to be an ego defense with repressed origins. Individuals feel obliged to withdraw from any relationship that threatens to be more than short-term, avoiding the risk of narcissistic injury, and will instead retreat into a comfort zone. The idea was first described by Melanie Klein in her psychoanalytic research on stages of narcissism in children.

The theory of narrative identity postulates that individuals form an identity by integrating their life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of the self that provides the individual with a sense of unity and purpose in life. This life narrative integrates one's reconstructed past, perceived present, and imagined future. Furthermore, this narrative is a story – it has characters, episodes, imagery, a setting, plots, and themes and often follows the traditional model of a story, having a beginning, middle, and an end (denouement). Narrative identity is the focus of interdisciplinary research, with deep roots in psychology.

References

  1. ↑ James, W. (1891). The Principles of Psychology, Vol.1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1891)
  2. 1 2 Tapu, CS (2001). Hypostatic Personality: Psychopathology of Doing and Being Made . Premier, p. 114. ISBN   973-8030-59-5.
  3. ↑ Sedikides, C. & Spencer, S. J. (Eds.) (2007). The Self. New York: Psychology Press
  4. 1 2 3 Le Grice, Keiron (2016). Archetypal Reflections Insights and ideas from Jungian Psychology. Muswell Hill Press. pp. 23–73. ISBN   978-1-908995-19-3.
  5. 1 2 Fadiman, J. Transpersonal Pioneers: Carl Jung. Archived 2013-04-25 at the Wayback Machine Personality and Personal Growth. By R. Frager. Excerpt from Personality and Personal Growth 6th ed. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005. 56. Sofia University.
  6. ↑ Redfearn, J.W.T. My Self, My Many Selves Academic Press. 1985
  7. ↑ Thompson, E (2017). Waking, Dreaming, Being. Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. Columbia University Press. ISBN   9780231538312.
  8. 1 2 3 Siegel, Allen M. (1996). Heinz Kohut and the Psychology of the Self. Routledge. pp. 70–118. ISBN   0-415-08638-8.
  9. ↑ Josephine Klein, Our Need for Others and its Roots in Infancy (London 1994) p. 230
  10. ↑ Josephine Klein, Our Need for Others and its Roots in Infancy (London 1994) p. 318
  11. 1 2 Jacki Watts et al, Developmental Psychology (2009) p. 148
  12. ↑ Jacki Watts et al, Developmental Psychology (2009) p. 149
  13. ↑ D. W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (New York 1965) p. 121
  14. ↑ Rosalind Minsky, Psychoanalysis and Gender (1996) p. 121
  15. ↑ D. W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (New York 1965) p. 187
  16. ↑ Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) p. 276
  17. 1 2 3 "Solomon, Carol, Ph.D. "Transactional Analysis Theory: the Basics." Transactional Analysis Journal 33.1 (2003): 15-22" (PDF).
  18. ↑ Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) pp. 248-249
  19. ↑ Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1974) p. 276
  20. 1 2 Smith, Eliot R.; Mackie, Diane M.; Claypool, Heather M. (2014-12-03). Social Psychology: Fourth Edition. Psychology Press. ISBN   9781136845116.
  21. ↑ E. R. Smith/D. M. Mackie, Social Psychology (2007) pp. 136-137
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Baumeister, Roy F., and Brad J. Bushman. "The Self." Social Psychology and Human Nature. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2011. 57–96. Print.
  23. ↑ McLeod, S. A. (2008). Self Concept. Retrieved from simplypsychology.org
  24. ↑ Colin Fraser, "Social Psychology" in Richard Gregory, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford 1987) p. 721-2
  25. ↑ DeLamater, John; Ward, Amanda (2013). Handbook of Social Psychology. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. p. 90. ISBN   9789400767713.
  26. ↑ Reynolds, Larry; Herman-Kinney, Nancy (2003). Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. p. 781. ISBN   978-0759100923.
  27. ↑ Nowak, A.; Vallacher, R. R.; Tesser, A.; Borkowski, W. (2000). "Society of self: The emergence of collective properties of self-Structure". Psychological Review. 107 (1): 39–61. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.107.1.39. PMID   10687402.
  28. ↑ Kenrick, D. T.; Li, N. P.; Butner, J. (2003). "Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms". Psychological Review. 110 (1): 3–28. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.110.1.3. PMID   12529056. S2CID   43306158.
  29. ↑ Conway, Martin A (2005). "Memory and the Self" (PDF). Journal of Memory and Language. 53: 594–628. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.08.005.
  30. 1 2 Conway, MA; Pleydell-Pearce, CW (2000). "The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system". Psychol. Rev. 107 (2): 261–88. doi:10.1037/0033-295x.107.2.261. PMID   10789197.
  31. 1 2 Rathbone, CJ; Moulin, CJ; Conway, MA (2009). "Autobiographical memory and amnesia: Using conceptual knowledge to ground the self". Neurocase. 21 (5): 1–14. doi:10.1080/13554790902849164. PMID   19382038. S2CID   205774482.
  32. 1 2 Addis DR, Tippett L J. (2008). The contributions of autobiographical memory to the content and continuity of identity. In F. Sani (Ed.), Self-Continuity: Individual and Collective Perspectives (pp. 71–84). New York: Psychology Press. ISBN   978-0-8058-5701-6
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