UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

How do you define “self”?

identity” is used to refer to one's social 'face' – how one perceives how one is perceived by
others (names or titles you’ve earned through your life)

Self is an awareness of one’s uniqueness, abilities, skills, consciousness, perceptions, and

beliefs about oneself. The totality of an individual.

● The term “self-awareness” seems pretty self-explanatory—it’s an awareness of the self.

● But what does that even mean? And why would so many self-help books - teachers
need to preach about the importance of such an obvious concept?
● Simple as it may be, self-awareness is something that many (if not most) of us lack.
● Yet, it’s the one thing that can help us achieve both self-improvement and self-
acceptance.

Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one’s character and feelings.

It sounds simple. But the truth is, many of us float through our days with little awareness of what
we’re doing or why we’re doing it.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing - our lives are much easier when we don’t have to
think about the little things, like brushing our teeth or boiling an egg, or cooking instant noodles
The danger arises when we stop noticing some of our more significant behaviors, like how we
react to or deal with problems. Our minds form patterns of emotional responses to stimuli, and
our responses become habits when we don’t notice them, correct them, or change it
Self-awareness means being conscious of this conditioning so we can have more control over
our emotional responses (especially the ones that might not be so healthy).

Self-awareness is the first step to setting goals. If you’re self-aware enough to know your
strengths and weaknesses, you’ll know which goals you need to set and the strategies that will
help you achieve them.
Being self-aware can help you to proactively manage your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors,
rather than allowing them to manage you.
 POINTERS

THE SELF
FROM VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
CHAPTER 1 LESSON 1

PHILOSOPHY - A study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and

existence, especially in an academic discipline.

Quite literally, the term "philosophy" means, "love of wisdom." An activity

people undertake when they seek to understand fundamental truths about
themselves, the world in which they live, and their relationships with the world and
each other. Those who study philosophy are perpetually engaged in asking,
answering, and arguing for their answers to life’s most basic questions.

THE PRE-SOCRATICS
These preceding philosophers are commonly known as pre-Socratic, not necessarily
because they were inferior to Socrates but merely because they came before.

The Pre-Socratics (before Socrates) like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, etc.

THE BIG THREE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and lasted through the
Hellenistic period (323 BC-30 BC). Greek philosophy covers an absolutely
enormous number of topics and is known for its undeniable influence on Western
thought.

SOCRATES - Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is

credited as a founder of Western philosophy and the first moral
philosopher of the Western ethical tradition of thought. He was the
first philosopher who ever engaged in systematic questioning about
the self.

He believed that knowledge was the ultimate virtue, best used to help people
improve their lives. He said that “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is
ignorance,” and believed that people made immoral choices because they did not
have knowledge.
He famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living and went
around Athens engaging men young and old to question their presumptions about
themselves and about the world.
Socratic Method/Dialogue - asking and answering question to stimulate critical
thinking and draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions.
 POINTERS

Every person is dualistic
● man = body + soul
● body= imperfect/permanent
● Soul= perfect & permanent
PLATO Plato is a student of Socrates and supported his idea that man is a dual nature of
body and soul.
Our true self is our soul. And the soul is the essence of a human
to think and will and is the responsible agent in knowing and
acting rightly or wrongly. The soul is the seat of knowledge and
ignorance, of goodness and badness.
Socrates suggested that the self consists of two dichotomous
realms: physical and ideal realms. The physical realm is
changeable, transient and imperfect. The ideal realm is
unchanging, eternal, and immortal. The physical world in which
we live belongs to the physical realm.

He added that there are three components of the soul:

1. The rational soul - reasoning and intellect, governs the affairs of the human person.
Located in the head and enables humans to think reflect, analyze, and do other
cognitive functions.

2. The spirited soul - In charge of emotions. Located in the chest, allows the person to
feel feelings like happiness, sadness, anger.

3. The appetitive soul - In charge of base desires. Located in the abdomen, drives the
human person to feel pain, hunger, thirst, and other physical wants.

Plato’s School: The Academy

an ancient Greek philosophical school founded by Plato in approximately 387 B.C. in Athens; named
for the mythological hero Academus (Akádēmos). In 86 B.C. the Roman dictator Sulla destroyed the
Academy. It was refounded and re-established years later until Emperor Justinian closed the
Academy in 529 AD.

ARISTOTLE - A Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient
Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of
philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition.

Aristotle’s concept of the self is hylomorphic, a portmanteau of the Greek words for
matter (hulê) and form (eidos or morphê). that is, the self or the human person is
composed of body and soul. The two are inseparable. Thus, we cannot talk about the
self with a soul only or a self with a body only. For Aristotle, the self is essentially body
and soul. Indeed, for Aristotle, the self is a unified creature.
Aristotle’s School: The Lyceum
Lyceum of Aristotle. The Lyceum (Ancient Greek: Λύκειον, Lykeion) or Lyceum was a temple
dedicated to Apollo Lyceus (Apollo the wolf-God). It was best known for the Peripatetic school of
philosophy founded there by Aristotle in 334 BC. The brutal sack of Athens by the Roman general
Sulla in 86 BC destroyed much of the Lyceum and disrupted the life of the school considerably.
The Lyceum was not a private club like the Academy; many of the lectures there were open to the
general public and given free of charge.
 POINTERS

ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354 - 430) was an Algerian-Roman philosopher and
theologian of the late Roman / early Medieval period. He is one of the most
important early figures in the development of Western Christianity and was a major
figure in bringing Christianity to dominance in the previously pagan Roman Empire.

Augustine's sense of self is his relation to God, both in his recognition of God's love
and his response to it—achieved through self-presentation, then self-realization.
Augustine believed one could not achieve inner peace without finding God's love.

St. Augustine agreed that man is bifurcated in nature.

1. Body - imperfect, and bound to die on earth

2. Soul - anticipating to live eternally in communion with God.

The goal of every human person is to attain this communion and bliss with the
Divine by living his life on earth with virtue.

St. Augustine is a fourth-century philosopher whose groundbreaking philosophy

infused Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. He is famous for being an inimitable
Catholic theologian and for his agnostic contributions to Western philosophy.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS

 man = matter + form

 matter (hyle) – “common stuff that makes up everything in the universe”
 form (morphe) – “essence of a substance or thing”; (what makes it what it
is)

The body of a human person is something that he shares with others, even
animals. However, what makes a person human and not a dog or a tiger is his soul,
his essence. And to St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle believes that the soul is what
animates the body and makes it human.
“The soul is what makes us humans”

 Aquinas begins his theory of self-knowledge from the claim that all our self-
knowledge is dependent on our experience of the world around us.

 He rejects a view that was popular at the time, i.e., that the mind is “always
on,” never sleeping, subconsciously self-aware in the background. Instead,
Aquinas argues, our awareness of ourselves is triggered and shaped by our
experiences of objects in our environment.

 He pictures the mind as a sort of “clay” that takes shape when it is activated
in knowing something. By itself, the mind is dark and formless; but in the
 POINTERS

moment of acting, it is “lit up” to itself from the inside and sees itself
engaged in that act. In other words, when I long for a cup of mid-afternoon
coffee, I’m not just aware of the coffee, but of myself as the one wanting it.

 So, for Aquinas, we don’t encounter ourselves as isolated minds or selves,

but rather always as agents interacting with our environment.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY

REÑE DESCARTES - René Descartes invented analytical geometry and introduced

skepticism as an essential part of the scientific method. He is regarded as one of
the greatest philosophers in history. His analytical geometry was a tremendous
conceptual breakthrough, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and
algebra.
 Father of Modern Philosophy
 human person = body + mind
 “There is so much that we should doubt”
 “If something is so clear and lucid as not to be doubted, that’s the only time
one should believe.”
 the only thing one can’t doubt is existence of the self
 “I think, therefore I am”
 the self = cogito (the thing that thinks)
+ extenza (extension of mind/body)

 the body is a machine attached to the mind

 it’s the mind that makes the man
 “I am a thinking thing. . . A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies,
wills, refuses, imagines, perceives.”

DAVID HUME –
• disagrees with the all the other aforementioned philosophers
• “one can only know what comes from the senses & experiences” (he is an
empiricist)
• “the self is not an entity beyond the physical body”
• you know that other people are humans not because you have seen their soul,
but because you see them, hear them, feel them etc.
• “the self is nothing but a bundle of impressions and ideas”
• impression- basic objects of our experience/sensation
-forms the core of our thoughts

• idea - copies of impressions

- not as “real” as impressions

• self = a collection of different perceptions which rapidly succeed each other

• self = in a perpetual flux and movement
• we want to believe that there is a unified, coherent self, soul, mind, etc. but
 POINTERS

~~actually~~ it is all just a combination of experiences.

IMMANUEK KANT – Kant was alarmed by David Hume’s notion that the mind is
simply a container for fleeting sensations and disconnected ideas, and our
reasoning ability is merely “a slave to the passions.” If Hume’s views proved true,
then humans would never be able to achieve genuine knowledge in any area of
experience: scientific, ethical, religious, or metaphysical, including questions such
as the nature of our selves.
For Kant, Hume’s devastating conclusions served as a Socratic “gadfly” to his spirit
of inquiry, awakening him from his intellectual sleep and galvanizing him to action:
“I admit it was David Hume’s remark that first, many years ago, interrupted my
dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my inquiries in the
field of speculative philosophy.”
Kant was convinced that philosophers and scientists of the time did not fully
appreciate the potential destructiveness of Hume’s views, and that it was up to him
(Kant) to meet and dismantle this threat to human knowledge. Kant begins his
analysis at Hume’s starting point—examining immediate sense experience—and he
acknowledges Hume’s point that all knowledge of the world begins with sensations:
sounds, shapes, colors, tastes, feels, smells.
He observes an obvious fact that Hume seems to have overlooked, namely, that
our primary experience of the world is not in terms of a disconnected stream of
sensations. Instead, we perceive and experience an organized world of objects,
relationships, and ideas, all existing within a fairly stable framework of space and
time. We each have fundamental organizing rules or principles built into the
architecture of our minds. These dynamic principles naturally order, categorize,
organize, and synthesize sense data into the familiar fabric of our lives, bounded by
space and time. These organizing rules are a priori in the sense that they precede
the sensations of experience and they exist independently of these sensations.

 the self organizes different impressions that one gets in relation to his own
existence
 the self is not only personality but also the seat of knowledge
 “Time, space, etc. are ideas that one cannot find in the world, but is built in
our minds
 “Apparatus of the mind”

GILBERT RYLE
 denies the internal, non-physical self
 “What truly matters is the behavior that a person manifests in his day-to-day
life.”
 looking for the self is like entering LU and looking for the “university”
 the self is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient
name that we use to refer to the behaviors that we make.

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY
 a phenomenologist who says the mind- body bifurcation is an invalid problem
 mind and body are inseparable
 “one’s body is his opening toward his existence to the world”
 POINTERS

 the living body, his thoughts, emotions, and experiences are all one.

LESSON 2:
THE SELF, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF

SOCIOLOGY
 Sociology is the study of human social relationships and institutions.
Sociology’s subject matter is diverse, ranging from crime to religion, from the
family to the state, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared
beliefs of a common culture, and from social stability to radical change in
whole societies.
 Unifying the study of these diverse subjects of study is sociology’s purpose of
understanding how human action and consciousness both shape and are
shaped by surrounding cultural and social structures.

SELF – The self in contemporary literature is commonly defines by the following

characteristics:
1. SEPARATE - The self is distinct from other selves. The self is always
unique and has its own identity. One cannot be another person. Even
twins are distinct from each other.
2. SELF-CONTAINED AND INDEPENDENT– Self is self-contained and
independent because in itself it can exist its distinctness allow it to be
self-contained with its own thoughts, characteristics, and volition. It does
nt require any other self for it to exist.
3. CONSISTENT – It has a personality that is enduring and therefore can be
expected to persist for quite some time. Its consistency allows it to be
studied, described, and measured, consistency also means that a
particular self’s traits, characteristics, tendencies, and potentialities are
more or less the same.
4. UNITARY – It is the center of all experiences and thoughts that run
through a certain person. It is like the chief command posy in an
individual where all processes, emotions, and thoughts converge.
5. PRIVATE – Each person sorts out information, feelings and emotions,
and thought processes within the self. The whole processes is never
accessible to anyone but the self. This last characteristic suggests that the
self is isolated from the external world. It lived within its own world.

SOCIETY
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or
a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory,
typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural
 POINTERS

expectations.

ELEMENTS OF SOCIETY
 LIKENESS – The likeness of members in a social group is the primary
basis of their mutuality.
 RECIPROCAL AWARENESS – Likeness is generative of reciprocity.
Once some are aware of the mutual likeness, they, certainly
differentiate against those who are not like them.
 DIFFERENCES - The social structure of humanity is based on the
family which rests upon the biological differences between the sexes,
men and women.
 CONFLICT – Conflict is an ever-present phenomenon present in every
human society. Conflict is a process of struggle through which all
things have come into existence.
 COOPERATION – Cooperation avoids mutual destructiveness and
results in an economy.
 INTERDEPENDENCE – The state of being dependent upon one
another.

CULTURE
THE ARTS AND OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF HUMAN
INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT REGARDED COLLECTIVELY.

ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

A group of words or ideas having common meaning and

LANGUAGE
is shared to a social situation is called language.
Symbols are anything used to represent express and
SYMBOLS
stand for an event situation.
Norms as elements of culture are the rules andthe
NORMS
guidelines which specify the behavior of an individual.
VALUES Values are the good idea and thinking of a person
Every sect within a culture having some beliefs for
BELIEFS
cultural refuge
COGNITIVE Thoughts which an individual has to be able to survive
ELEMENTS existing social situation.
 POINTERS

THE SELF AND THE EXTERNAL REALITY

 The self is the subject, and the external reality is the object.
 The subject does not create its objects, but the subject realizes itself in the
relation with its object.
 External Reality are the objects of our physical environment, the subject's
body, and the subject's inscribed place in society.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVE

The self should not be seen as a static entity that stays constant through and
through. Rather, the self has to be seen as something that is in unceasing flux, in a
constant struggle with external reality.

MARCEL MAUSS

Marcel Mauss, (born May 10, 1872, Épinal, Fr.—died Feb. 10, 1950, Paris),
French sociologist and anthropologist whose contributions include a highly
original comparative study of the relation between forms of exchange and
social structure. His views on the theory and method of ethnology are
thought to have influenced many eminent social scientists, including Claude
Lévi-Strauss, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, and Melville J.
Herskovits.

Mauss turned the attention of French sociologists, philosophers, and psychologists

toward ethnology. He took pains to distinguish points of view in nonliterate
societies, thus preserving their freshness and specificity and, at the same time,
strengthening the link between psychology and anthropology.

Marcel Mauss (French: [mos]; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French
sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed
the boundaries between sociology and anthropology. Today, he is perhaps better
recognized for his influence on the latter discipline, particularly with respect to his
analyses of topics such as magic, sacrifice and gift exchange in different cultures
around the world. Mauss had a significant influence upon Claude Lévi-Strauss, the
founder of structural anthropology. His most famous work is The Gift (1925).

Mauss was born in Épinal, Vosges, to a Jewish family, and studied philosophy at
Bordeaux, where his maternal uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time. In
the 1890s, Mauss began his lifelong study of linguistics, Indology, Sanskrit,
Hebrew, and the 'history of religions and uncivilized peoples
 POINTERS

According to Mauss, every self has two faces: Personne and Moi

MOI – refers to a person's sense of who he is, his body, & his basic identity.
PERSONNE – is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who he is.
Ex: How it is to be living in a particular institution, family, religion& nationality and
how to behave as given the expectations & influences from others.

How does culture affect self? - Culture helps define how individuals see themselves
and how they relate to others. A family's cultural values shape the development of
its child's self-concept: Culture shapes how we each see ourselves and others. For
example, some cultures prefer children to be quiet and respectful when around
adults.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Charles Horton Cooley, American sociologist who employed a sociopsychological
approach to the understanding of society. Cooley, the son of Michigan Supreme
Court judge Thomas McIntyre Cooley, earned his Ph.D. at the University of
Michigan in 1894. He had started teaching at the university in 1892, became a full
professor of sociology in 1907, and remained there until the end of his life.

Cooley believed that social reality was qualitatively different from physical reality
and was therefore less amenable to measurement. Because of this view, he was
more productive as a social theorist than as a research scientist. His Human Nature
and the Social Order (1902, reprinted 1956) discussed the determination of the self
through interaction with others. Cooley theorized that the sense of self is formed in
two ways: by one’s actual experiences and by what one imagines others’ ideas of
oneself to be—a phenomenon Cooley called the “looking glass self.” This dual
conception contributed to Cooley’s fundamental theory that the mind is social and
that society is a mental construct.

A PERSON UNDERSTAND AND ABLE TO CONSTRUCT A VIEW OF HIMSELF

THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S PERCEPTION OR HOW OTHERS VIEW THEM.
THIS IS THE PROCESS CALLED “LOOKING GLASS SELF”

THREE ELEMENTS OF LOOKING GLASS SELF

 Our perception of how we look to others
 Our perception of the judgement of how we look
 Our feelings about the judgement

DIGITAL LOOKING GLASS

Social media has brought with it the concept of the “cyber” self, Mary Aiken
explains. The cyber self is the version of him or herself a person chooses to present
on a digital platform. As in real life, the cyber self may interact with other
individuals, receive social feedback, and align to social conformities. However, the
 POINTERS

differences between the cyber self and actual self are profound.
GEORGE HERBERT MEAD’S THEORY

THE SELF IS THE PERSON’S DISTINCT IDENTITY THAT IS DEVELOPED THROUGH

SOCIAL INTERACTION. IN ORDER TO ENGAGE IN THIS PROCESS OF “SELF”, AN
INDIVIDUAL HAS TO BE ABLE TO VIEW HIMSELF THROUGH THE EYES OF OTHERS.

Mead developed a concept that proposed a different stage of self-development.

These stages are language, play and game.

 Language gives the individual the capacity to express himself or herself while
at the same time comprehending what the other people are conveying.
Language set the stage for self-development.
 The second stage is play, individuals’ role- play or assume the perspective of
others. Role playing enables the person to internalize some other people’s
perspectives; hence they develop an understanding of how the other people
feel about themselves in a variety of situation.
 The game stage is the level where the individual not only internalizes the
other people perspectives, he or she is also able to take into account societal
rules and adheres to it, according to Mead, the self is developed by
understanding the rule, and must abide by it to win the game or be
successful at an activity.

Two Side of Self: I and Me

According to Mead, ‘me’ is the product of what the person has learned while
interacting with others and with the environment. Learned behaviors, attitudes, and
even expectations compromise the ‘me.’ The ‘me’ exercises social control over the
self. It sees to it that rules are not broken.

The ‘I’ is that part of the self that is unsocialized and spontaneous. It is the
individual’s response to the community’s attitude toward the person. The ‘I’
presents impulses and drives. It enables him/her to express individualism and
creativity.
The ‘I’ does not blindly follow rules. It understands when to possible bend or
stretch the rules that govern the social interactions. It constructs a response based
on what has been learned by the ‘me.’

LEV VYGOTSKY
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on
psychological development in children. In order to fully understand the human
mind, he believed one must understand its genesis. Consequently, the majority of
his work involved the study of infant and child behavior, as well as the development
of language acquisition and the development of concepts; now often referred to as
 POINTERS

schemas or schemata.

 Lev Vygotsky was a Russian teacher who is considered a pioneer in learning

in social contexts. As a psychologist, he was also the first to examine how
our social interactions influence our cognitive growth.
 He was convinced that learning occurred through interactions with others in
our communities: peers, adults, teachers, and other mentors. Vygotsky
sought to understand how people learn in a social environment and created a
unique theory on social learning.
 He determined that teachers have the ability to control many factors in an
educational setting, including tasks, behaviors, and responses. As a result,
he encouraged more interactive activities to promote cognitive growth.
Vygotsky also stated that culture was a primary determinant of knowledge
acquisition. He argued that children learn from the beliefs and attitudes
modeled by their culture.
 Vygotsky had a groundbreaking theory that language was the basis of
learning. His points included the argument that language supports other
activities such as reading and writing. In addition, he claimed that logic,
reasoning, and reflective thinking were all possible as a result of language.
 Fundamentally, Vygotsky recognized that social settings and learning were
closely entwined. Therefore, one must identify and implement strategies that
are effective in a social context. It is also important to note that the culture
of each individual is created by their unique strengths, language, and prior
experience. One of the ways that students gain knowledge is when they
collaborate with their peers or mentors on activities that involve problem-
solving skills and real-life tasks.

VYGOTSKY’S SOCIO-CULTURAL THEORY

 Lev Vygotsky focused on the important contributions that society makes to

individual development in his sociocultural theory of cognitive development.
Thus, this theory emphasizes the interaction between how people develop
and their culture. Furthermore, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive
development also suggests that human learning is, to a large extent, a social
process.
 Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development didn’t only focus on
how adults and peers influence individual learning. Also, it focuses on how
cultural beliefs and attitudes impact the way instruction and learning take
place.
 Thus, note that Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is one of the foundations of
constructivism. Insofar, as it states that children, far from being mere
passive recipients, build their own knowledge and their own schema from the
information they receive.
 POINTERS

The Zone of Proximal Development

 One of the most important concepts in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of

cognitive development is the “zone of proximal development”. According to
Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development is the distance between the
actual level of development determined by independent problem solving and
the level of potential development determined through problem-solving
under the guidance or “scaffolding” of an adult or in collaboration with more
capable peers.
 Essentially, the zone of proximal development includes all the knowledge and
skills that a person can’t yet understand or develop on their own but can
learn with guidance. As children improve their skills and knowledge, they
progressively extend their zone of proximal development.

Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

 This theory covers the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and the Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD). Children and adults are social creatures, so
they rely on social interaction to encounter new experiences and activities,
which they then learn.
 Imagine three circles with 2 surrounding the innermost, smallest circle. The
central circle is the “I can do this by myself” circle. The next circle is “I can
do this with some help,” or the ZPD. The final, largest circle is the “I can’t do
this, even if I get help”. Because we are social creatures, our ability to learn
a new skill is greatly affected by the presence of someone who already knows
the skill. Vygotsky might have simply stated, “We learn by watching.”,
though, of course, it’s more complicated than that.

Language Development
Vygotsky was particularly interested in the role of language in cognitive
development. Given that language is vital to human interactions, he believed that
language was the most important tool that human could utilize. Language,
especially in the realm of collaborative dialogue, is the way the more knowledgeable
other communications important information to a child. Vygotsky believed that
there are three forms of language, as outlined below.
 Social Speech – This is what Vygotsky referred to as the external
communication that people use to talk with other people, and he believed
that this form of language was typical in children from the age of two.
 Private Speech – This is what Vykotsky referred to as the internal
communication that a person directs to themselves. It serves an intellectual
function, and it is typical in children from the age of three.
 POINTERS

 Silent Inner Speech – Vygotsky believed that this is what happens when
private speech diminishes in its audibility until it become a self-regulating
function. He believed this was typical in children from the age of seven.
Imaginative Play

 Adults may see children engaging in imaginative play, pretending to be

pirates or princesses, and think that it’s just a fun way that children entertain
themselves. What they may not realize, however, is the vital role that
imaginative play serves in a child’s cognitive development.
 Imaginative play helps children to develop meaning and make sense of the
world they live in. It also helps them to develop their thinking skills as well as
their use of language. With imaginative play, children often engage in
pretend role-playing activities. This often involves children creating a story as
well the characters involved in the story. This involves dialogues that they
develop with the other children. It also involves exercising problem solving
skills as they work out the plot of their story.
 The dialogues they create help them to develop their language as they
imitate things that they have observed in the real world. Even when children
engage in imaginative play by themselves, they engage in dialogues with
themselves that help them to develop language and problem-solving skills.

GENDER AND THE SELF

A gender stereotype is a generalized view or preconception about attributes or
characteristics, or the roles that are or ought to be possessed by, or performed by,
women and men. A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s
capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or
make choices about their lives.

Further, gender stereotypes compounded and intersecting with other stereotypes

have a disproportionate negative impact on certain groups of women, such as
women from minority or indigenous groups, women with disabilities, women from
lower caste groups or with lower economic status, migrant women, etc.

Gender stereotyping refers to the practice of ascribing to an individual woman or

man specific attributes, characteristics, or roles by reason only of her or his
membership in the social group of women or men. Gender stereotyping is wrongful
when it results in a violation or violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms.

Example, the traditional view of women as care givers means that child care
responsibilities often fall exclusively on women. House chores being girl’s
responsibility while men are expected to work and provide for their families. Girls
are expected to be bad drivers and boys are not supposed to cry, pink is for girls,
blue is for boys etc.
 POINTERS

 ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT- Which is part of Vygotsky socio cultural

theory of cognitive development.
 Cognito – ergo sum
 Separate – the self is distinct from other selves. One of the definitions of self
in contemporary literature.
 The academy- is the name of Plato’s school.
 Sociology- the study of social relationships and institutions.
 I and Me – Meads two faces of the self
 David Hume – the Scottish philosopher that believe that the self is nothing
but a bundle of impressions and ideas.
 Self-contained – it also defines the self in contemporary literature.
 Cooley – the wind is social and that society is a mental construct
 The lyceum – is the name of Aristotle’s School
 Maurice Merlau - Ponty – said that the mind and body are inseparable or
cannot be seperated.
 Mei and Personne – The two faces of self, according to Mauss
 Psychology – is the scientific study of mind and behavior.
 St. Thomas Aquinas – makes a human and not a dog or a tiger is his soul.
 Aggression – is not a defense mechanism of sigmund freud
 Sigmund Freud – is the father of psychoanalysis.
 Humor – is not a defense mechanism of sigmund freud.
 Carl Rogers – is the one proposed of the person-centered theory
 Actualizing Tendency – is a basic assumption of person-centered theory.
 Albert bandura – the bobo doll experiment
 Electra Complex – the daughter feels that her mother is her rival in the
attention of the father.
 David Lester – Proposed of the multiple self-theory of the mind.
 Carl Jung - is the father of analytical psychology.
 William James – is the father of American Psychology
 Sigmund Freud – Proposed the term Eodipus Complex
 Greece – where Western Philosophy originated.
 Nirvana – to Buddhism what is the escape from samsara.
 Siddharitha – The prince who became enlightened and founded what become
one of the major religious of the worlds.
 Lao Tzu – founded taoism
 Prarabdha - According to Hinduism which karma d=you do experience in the
present life.
 India – Buddhism started in.
 Lao Tzu – is the author of Tao te Ching
 Wu Wei – The ultimate goal of life is to attain the state
 Krigamana – According to hinduism which karma will shape our future life.
 Annata – is the Buddhism doctrine of no-self.