Understanding the self (Chapter 1-4)
reason to sort things out and exert control,
Chapter 1 – Philosophical perspective of the
self
Philosophy employs the inquisitive mind to
discover the ultimate causes, reasons, and
principles of everything.
The etymological definition of philosophy “love of
wisdom” could pertain to the desire for truth by
formulating never ending questions to provide
answers to every inquiry about the nature of
human existence.
Most philosophers agree that self-knowledge is a
prerequisite to a happy and meaningful life.
Socrates: An unexamined life is not worth
living
- Self is synonymous with the soul.
- Reality consists of two dichotomous
realms: physical and ideal realms.
Physical realm – changeable, transient,
and imperfect.
Body belongs to physical realm.
Ideal realm – unchanging, eternal, and
immortal.
Sould belongs to ideal realm.
- Socrates explains the essence of the self
– the soul – is the immortal entity.
- Socrates suggest that man must live an
examined life and a life of purpose and
value.
- The individual person can have a
meaningful and happy life only if he
becomes virtuous and knows the value of
himself that can be achieved through
incessant soul-searching.
- Introspection – a method of carefully
examining one’s thoughts and emotions –
to gain self-knowledge.
Plato: The self is an immortal soul
- Like socrates, he believed that the self is
synonymous with the soul.
- He introduces the idea of a three part
soul/self: reason, physical appetite, and
spirit or passion.
Reason – the divine essence that enables
us to think deeply, make wise choices,
and achieve a true understanding of
eternal truths.
Physical appetite – basic biological needs
(eg. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire)
Spirit or passion – basic emotions (eg.
Love, anger, ambition, etc.)
- These 3 elements of our selves are in a
dynamic relationship with another,
sometimes in conflict. When conflict
occurs, it is the responsibility of the
restoring a harmonious relationship
among these 3 elements.
- Plato believes that genuine happiness can
only be achieved by people who
consistently make sure that their reason is
in control of their spirits and appetites.
- In his Theory of forms, he introduces the
concepts of two worlds : the world of
forms (non-physical ideas) and the world
of sense (reality).
World of forms – real and permanent
World of sense – temporary and only a
replica of the ideal world.
Aristotle: The soul is the essence of the self
- He suggest that anything with life has a
soul.
- Soul is the essence of all living things.
Thus, the soul is the essence of the self.
- He introduces the three kinds of soul :
vegetative, sentient, and rational.
The vegetative soul includes the physical
body that can grow.
Sentient soul includes sensual desires,
feelings, and emotions.
Rational soul is what makes man human.
It includes the intellect that allows man to
know and understand things.
- Aristotle suggests that the rational nature
of the self is to lead a good, flourishing,
and fulfilling life (self-actualization).
St. Augustine: The self has an immortal soul
- Augustine, is regarded as a saint (i.e., St.
Augustine of Hippo) in the Catholic
Church.
- He integrates the ideas of Plato and
teachings of Christianity.
- Augustine believes that the physical body
is radically different from and inferior to its
inhabitant, the immortal soul.
- He ultimately came to view the body as
“spouse” of the soul, both attached to one
another by a “natural appetite.” He
believes that the body is united with the
soul, so that man may be entire and
complete.
- He believes that the soul is what governs
and defines man.
- Augustine is convinced that the self is
known only through knowing God.
Accordingly, self-knowledge is a
consequence of knowledge of God.
- Augustine espouses the significance of
reflection, as well as the importance of
prayers and confessions to arrive at a
justification for the existence of God. For
 him, “knowledge can only come by seeing
the truth that dwells within us.” The truth of
which Augustine speaks refers to the truth
of knowing God.
- Augustine develops the fundamental
concept of the human person, and thus
provides the philosophical principle, “I am
doubting, therefore I am.”
Rene Descartes: I think therefore i am
- father of modern philosophy.
- The Latin phrase Cogito ergo sum - “I
think therefore I am” is the keystone of
Descartes’ concept of self.
- For him, the — act of thinking about the
self—of being self-conscious—is in itself
proof that there is a self. He is confident
that no rational person will doubt his or
her own existence as a conscious,
thinking entity—while we are aware of
thinking about our selves.
- He contends further that if man reflects
thoughtfully, he will realize that there are
two dimensions of the human self: the self
as a thinking entity and the self as a
physical body.
- In particular, he introduces the idea of the
thinking self (or soul) as non-material,
immortal, conscious being, and
independent of the physical laws of the
universe.
- In contrast, the physical body is a
material, mortal, non-thinking entity, fully
governed by the physical laws of nature.
- In other words, the soul and the body are
independent of one another, and each can
exist and function without the other.
John Locke: The Self Is Consciousness
- For English philosopher John Locke, the
human mind at birth is tabula rasa or a
blank slate. He feels that the self, or
personal identity, is constructed primarily
from sense experiences—or more
specifically, what people see, hear, smell,
taste, and feel.
- For Locke, conscious awareness and
memory of previous experiences are the
keys to understanding the self. Locke
believes that the essence of the self is its
conscious awareness of itself as a
thinking, reasoning, and reflecting identity.
- Self-consciousness is necessary to have a
coherent personal (self) identity or
knowledge of the self as a person.
- Locke is proposing that people could use
the power of reason to gain knowledge
and consequently use this knowledge to
understand experiences.
- using the power of reason and
introspection enables one to understand
and achieve accurate conclusions about
the self (or personal identity).
David Hume: There Is No Self
- According to Hume, what people
experience is just a bundle or collection of
different perceptions. Hume maintains that
if people carefully examine the contents of
their experience, they will find that there
are only distinct entities: impressions and
ideas.
- Impressions are the basic sensations of
people’s experience such as hate, love,
joy, grief, pain, cold, and heat.
Impressions are vivid perceptions and are
strong and lively.
- Ideas, however, are thoughts and images
from impressions so they are less lively
and vivid.
- the idea of personal identity is a result of
imagination.
Immanuel Kant: We Construct The Self
- it is the self that makes experiencing an
intelligible world possible because it is the
self that is actively organizing and
synthesizing of our thoughts and
perceptions.
- In other words, the self constructs its own
reality, actively creating a world that is
familiar, predictable, and most
significantly, mine.
- Through rationality, people are able to
understand certain abstract ideas that
have no corresponding physical object or
sensory experience.
Sigmund Freud: The Self Is Multilayered
- Freud holds that the self consists of three
layers: conscious, unconscious, and
preconscious.
- The conscious self is governed by the
“reality principle.”
- The conscious part of the self is organized
in ways that are rational, practical, and
appropriate to the environment. The
conscious self usually takes into account
the realistic demands of the situation, the
consequences of various actions, and the
overriding need to preserve the
equilibrium (balance) of the entire
psychodynamic system of the self.
- The unconscious part (governed by
pleasure principle) contains basic
instinctual drives including sexuality,
aggressiveness, and self-destruction;
traumatic memories; unfulfilled wishes and
childhood fantasies; and thoughts and
 feelings that would be considered socially
taboo.
- Preconscious self contains material that is
not threatening and is easily brought to
mind.
Gilbert Ryle: The Self Is The Way People
Behave
- The self is best understood as a pattern of
behavior, the tendency or disposition of a
person to behave in a certain way in
certain circumstances.
- Provides the philosophical principle, “I act
therefore I am”.
- The self is the same as bodily behavior.
- He concludes that the mind is the totality
of human dispositions that is known
through the way people behave.
Paul Churchland: The Self Is The Brain
- Advocates the idea of eliminative
materialism or the idea that the self is
inseparable from the brain and the
physiology of the body.
- If the brain is gone, there is no self.
- The physical brain, not the imaginary
mind, gives people the sense of self. The
mind doesn’t exist because it cannot be
experienced by the senses.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Self Is Embodied
Subjectivity
- all knowledge about the self (e.g.,
understanding the nature of the self) is
based on the “phenomena” of experience.
- The “I” is a single integrated core identity,
a combination of the mental, physical, and
emotional structures around a core
identity of the self.
- He is convinced that consciousness, the
world, and the human body are intricately
intertwined in perceiving the world.
Chapter 2 – Sociological perspective : the self
as a product of society
Sociological perspective of the self is based on
the assumption that human behavior is influenced
by group life. A particular view of oneself is
formed through interactions with other people,
groups, or social institutions.
For sociologists like Mead and Cooley, the self
does not depend on biological predispositions;
rather, it is a product of social interaction. The
sense of self emerges as the individual partakes
in the society.
Charles Horton Cooley : The looking glass self
- Sociologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902
introduces the looking-glass self to
highlight that the people whom a person
interacts with become a mirror in which he
or she views himself or herself.
George Herbert Mead : theory of social self
- Mead’s theory of social self explained that
the self has two divisions : the “I” and the
“Me”.
- The “I” is the subjective element and the
active side of the self, It represents the
spontaneous and unique traits of the
individual.
- The “me,” on the other hand, is the
objective element of the self that
represents the internalized attitudes and
demands of other people and the
individual's awareness of those demands.
- The full development of the self is attained
when the “I” and the “me” are united.
Mead details the development of the self in a
three-stage process:
1. In the preparatory stage (0-3 years old),
children imitate the people around them,
especially family members with whom they
have daily interaction. But they copy behavior
without understanding underlying intentions,
and so at this stage, they have no sense of
self. During this stage, children are just
preparing for role-taking.
2. During the play stage (3 to 5 years old),
children start to view themselves in relation to
others as they learn to communicate through
language and other symbols. At this stage,
role-taking is exhibited; however, children do
not perceive role-taking as something
expected of them. The self emerges as
children pretend to take the roles of specific
people or significant others, those individuals
who are important agents of socialization. At
this stage, the self is developing.
3. In the game stage (begins in the early
school years; about 8 or 9 years old) children
understand not only their own social position
but also those of others around them. At this
stage, children become concerned about and
take into account in their behavior the
generalized others which refer to the attitudes,
viewpoints, demands, and expectations of the
society which include cultural norms and
values that serve as references in evaluating
oneself. This time, they can have a more
sophisticated look of people and an ability to
respond to numerous members of the social
 environment. During this stage, the self is now
present.
The Self As A Product Of Modern And
Postmodern Societies
Gerry Lanuza’s (2004) article, “The Constitution of
the Self,” discusses the relationship between
society and the individual.
According to him, in modern societies the
attainment and stability of self-identity are freely
chosen. It is no longer restricted by customs and
traditions. While this newfound freedom offers
infinite possibilities for self-cultivation, problems
such as alienation and dehumanization of the self
also appear which hinder the full development of
human potentials.
In postmodern societies, self-identity continuously
changes due to the demands of multitude of social
contexts, new information technologies, and
globalization.
French sociologist Jean Baudrillard exposes the
negative consequences of postmodernity to
individuals in the society (Demeterio, 2013). For
him, consumption structures the postmodern
society. The postmodern individuals achieve self-
identity through prestige symbols that they
consume. Individuals seek for a position in society
through the quality of prestige symbols that they
can afford to consume.
The self may be in a never-ending search for
prestige in the postmodern society.
Chapter 3 – An Anthropological
Conceptualization Of The Self : The Self As
Embedded In Culture
Anthropology is concerned with how cultural and
biological processes interact to shape human
experience. Contemporary anthropologists believe
that culture and self are complementary concepts
that are to be understood in relation to one
another.
According to a distinguished anthropology
professor, James L. Peacock (1986,p.10),
“anthropology encroaches on the territory of the
sciences as well as the humanities, and
transcends the conventional boundaries of both
while addressing questions from the distant past
and the pressing present—perhaps with
implications for the future.”
Anthropology considers human experience as an
interplay of “nature”, referring to genetic
inheritance which sets the individual’s potentials,
and “nurture”, referring to the sociocultural
environment.
Perhaps, the most important contribution of
anthroplogy is providing insights into the nature of
self based on continuous understanding of the
basic elements of culture (Peacock, 1986).
The Cultural Constitution Of Self And Identity
British anthropologist Edward Tylor defines culture
as “… that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society.”
One may say that culture provides patterns of
“ways of life.”
In social anthropology, the concept of identity was
used mostly in the context of “ethnic identity”,
pointing out the sameness of the self with others,
that is, to a consciousness of sharing certain
characteristics within a group.
Identity is understood as a disposition of basic
personality features acquired mostly during
childhood and , once integrated, more or less
fixed. The identity therefore makes a human being
a person and an acting individual.
There are 2 ways in which the concept of self is
viewed in different societies:
Egocentric – the self is seen as an
autonomous and distinct individual. Each
person is defined as a replica of all
humanity but capable of acting
independently from others.
Sociocentric – the self is contingent on a
situation or social setting. This is a view of
self that is context-dependent which
emphasizes that there is no intrinsic self
that can possess enduring qualities.
The identity toolbox refers to the features of a
person’s identity that he or she chooses to
emphasize in constructing a social self.
Family membership could be the most significant
feature to determine a person’s social identity.
Personal naming – a universal practice with
numerous cross-cultural variations, establishes a
child’s birthright and social identity. A name is an
important device to individualize a person and
legitimize him/her as a member of social group
such as a family.
One’s identity is not inborn. It is something people
continuously develop in life. For instance, rites of
passage usually involve ritual activities to prepare
individuals for new roles from one stage of life to
another such as birth, puberty, marriage, having
children, and death.
Arnold van Gennep believes that changes in one’s
status and identity are marked by a three-phased
rite of passage: separation, liminality, and
incorporation.
In the separation phase, people detach from their
former identity to another. For example, in a
wedding, the bride walking down the aisle to be
“given away” by the parents to the groom implies
the separation from one’s family to becomepart of
anew one.
In the liminality phase, a person transitions from
one identity to another. For example, the wedding
ceremony itself is the process of transition of the
bride and groom from singlehood to married life.
Finally, in the incorporation phase, the change
inone’s status is officially incorporated. For
example, the wedding reception and parties that
celebrate the wedding serve as the markers that
officially recognize the bride and groom's change
towards being husband and wife.
The Self As Embedded In Culture
Clifford Geertz offers a reformulation of the
concept of culture which favors a symbolic
interpretative model of culture. He defines culture
as a system of inherited conceptions expressed in
symbolic forms by means of which people
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their
knowledge about and attitudes towards life.
Geertz suggests two important ideas:
(1) culture should not be perceived only as
“complexes of concrete behavior patterns—
customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters—as
has, by and large, been the case up to now, but
as a set of control mechanisms—plans, recipes,
rules, instructions—for the governing behavior,
and
(2) man is precisely the animal most desperately
dependent upon such extragenetic, outside-the-
skin control mechanisms, such cultural programs,
for ordering his behavior” (1973, p.44).
Geertz also emphasizes that human nature is
interdependent with culture: “Without men, no
culture, certainly; but equally, and more
significantly, without culture, no men”.
Chapter 4 – Psychological Perspective Of The
Self
William James’ Concept Of Self: The Me-Self
And The I-Self
William James suggests that the self is divided
into two categories: the I-Self and the Me-Self.
The I-Self refers to the self that knows who he or
she is which is also called the thinking self. The I-
Self reflects the soul of a person or the mind
which is also called the pure ego.
The Me-Self, on the other hand, is the empirical
self which refers to the persons personal
experiences and is further divided into sub-
categories: the material self, social self, and
spiritual self.
The material self is attributed to an
individual's physical attributes and
material possessions that contribute to
one’s self-image.
The social self refers to who a person is
and how he or she acts in social
situations. James believes that people
have different social selves depending on
the context of a social situation.
The spiritual self refers to the most
intimate and important part of the self that
includes the person's purpose, core
values, conscience, and moral behavior.
Carl Rogers’ Self Theory: Real And Ideal Self
Rogers suggests two components of self-concept:
the real self and the ideal self.
The real self consists of all the ideas, including the
awareness of what one is and what one can do.
On the other hand, the ideal self is the person’s
conception of what one should be or what one
aspires to be which includes one’s goals and
ambitions in life.
In Roger’s view, the closer the ideal self to the
real self, the more fulfilled and happy the
individual becomes. When the ideal self is far from
the real self, the person becomes unhappy and
dissatisfied.
Multiple Versus Unified Self, True Versus
False Self
Self-understanding in adolescents also includes
conceptualizing the self as multiple or unified and
true or false. The construction of multiple selves
varies across different interpersonal and
intrapersonal roles and relationships.
Winnicott has found that the self is composed of
the true self and the false self. The function of the
false self is to hide and protect the true self.
The Self As Proactive And Agentic
Albert Bandura (2001) posits that humans,
through their agency are perceived as proactive
agents of experiences.
Agency embodies the endowments, belief
systems, self-regulatory capabilities, and
distributed structures and functions through which
personal influence is exercised, rather than reside
as a discrete entity.
The main features of human agency are
intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and
self-reflectiveness.
Intentionality refers to acts done intentionally.
Intentions center on plans of action with the
anticipation of possible outcomes.
Forethought enables the person to anticipate the
likely consequences of prospective actions.
Through the exercise of forethought, people are
guided in their actions in the anticipation of future
events.
Self-reactiveness involves making choices and
choosing appropriate nurses of action as well as
motivating and regulating them.
Self-reflectiveness gives the person the ability to
reflect upon and the adequacy of his or her
thoughts and actions. People are not only agents
of action but also self-examiners of their own
functioning.
The Self As The Central Archetype
Archetypes are the universal models after which
roles are patterned. The archetype represents the
hidden potentialities of the psyche, or total
personality.
For Jung, there are four major archetypes:
persona, shadow, animus/anima, and self.
The persona refers to social roles that individuals
present to others.
The shadow refers to the repressed thoughts that
are socially unacceptable. This archetype is often
considered as the dark side of the psyche.
The anima is the feminine side of the male psyche
while the animus is the masculine side of the
female psyche.
The self is the central archetype that unites all
parts of the psyche. The ego is the individual's
conscious perception of the self.
Sigmund Freud's Construction Of Self And
Personality
According to Sigmund Freud, the dynamic forces
within the self are many and in inevitable conflict.
He argues that the mind is composed of three
structures through which personality is formed:
the id, ego, and superego.
The id refers to the component of the personality
characterized by its need to satisfy basic urges
and desires.
The ego refers to the I and operates on the reality
principle and controls the id. The ego can conform
with existing societal consideration.
The superego refers to the "conscience" and
"moral judge" of one's conduct. Violation of rules
leads to feelings of guilt. It strives for perfection
rather than pleasure.
It appears that the id is the devil within the self,
the superego is the angel, and ego is the person
in the middle. The id, ego, and superego are often
in conflict with each other.
Freud uses the term "ego strength" to refer to the
ego's ability to resolve the conflict between the
three structures. If this constant state of conflict is
unresolved, personality problems may arise.
Psychosexual Stages of Development
Each stage is associated with conflicts that the
individual must resolve so that he or she can
successfully move on to the next stage. Freud
also believes that each stage has needs and that
the dissatisfaction of needs may result in fixation
which could have lasting negative effects on one's
personality.
The Role Of Erik Erikson's Theory In
Understanding The Self
In Erik Erikson's theory, adolescence is a period
of identity development. Identity formation is
usually viewed as a process that requires
adolescents to distance themselves from the
strong expectations and definitions imposed by
parents and other family members.

To achieve an individual identity, one must create

a vision of the self that is authentic which is
anchored on the meaning of his or her goals for
the future sense of having hold of one's destiny in
an effort to reach goals that are personally
meaningful (Newman & Newman, 2009).

Erikson's theory proposes that individuals go

through eight psychosocial stages of
development. Each stage consists of
developmental tasks that one needs to
accomplish to develop successfully. During each
stage, an individual also experiences life crises
which could have negative consequences if not
properly resolved.