PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SELF

FDM
PSYCHOLOGY
IT  IS A MULTIFACETED DISCIPLINE AND INCLUDES MANY SUB-FIELDS
OF STUDY SUCH AREAS AS HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, SPORTS, HEALTH,
CLINICAL, SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES.
 A. THE SELF AS A
COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTION

1) Me-Self vs I-Self

2) Global vs Differentiated Models

3) Real and Ideal self-concepts

4) Multiple vs Unified selves

5) True vs False selves

 WILLIAM JAMES:
ME-SELF VS I-SELF

• William James is known as the Father of American Psychology.

“A man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but
his clothes and his house.”

• The Self is divided into two categories:

• I-Self
• Me-Self
 ME-SELF: EMPIRICAL SELF
• Material Self: mine
• Tangible objects, people or places that carry the designation of mine
• Bodily self and extracorporeal self

• Social Self: ours

• Parents, siblings, romantic partners
• Relationship self: interpersonal relationships

• Spiritual Self: inner or psychological self; subjective being

• Self-perceived abilities, attitudes, emotions, interests, values, and motives.
 I-SELF: THINKING SELF

• Individual Self: individual traits, abilities and possessions

• Spiritual self and aspects of the material self (I am tall; I am shy)

• Relational Self: other people with whom we have a personal

relationship
• Aspects of the social self (I am Noah’s dad)

• Collective Self: Social roles, social categories, and social group

membership
• Aspects of social self (I am a Filipino)
 GLOBAL VS DIFFERENTIATED
MODELS
GLOBAL MODEL DIFFERENTIATED
MODEL
- Psychoanalysis: the psyche is divided
• Gestalt: into the id, ego and superego
the whole is more than the sum of
its parts. - The self as divided into dimensions:
physical, emotional, behavioral, social,
• Humanistic: moral.
the person is a total person and
cannot be reduced into parts. - The self as personality divided into Traits.
 THREE STRUCTURES OF THE MIND
THROUGH WHICH PERSONALITY IS
FORMED:

A. ID- need to satisfy basic urges and desires; pleasure-seeking side,

impulsive, child-like and demands instant gratification (DEVIL).

B. EGO- refers to the ‘I’ and operates on the reality principle and
controls the ID; can conform with existing societal consideration
(ANGEL).

C. SUPEREGO- conscience and moral judge of one’s conduct;

strives for perfection than pleasure (PERSON).
 CARL RANSOM ROGER’S SELF THEORY:
REAL VS IDEAL SELF
• Carl Ramson Rogers is the founder of Humanistic Approach to
Psychology.
• The self develops from interactions with significant people and
awareness of one’s own characteristics and level of functioning.
• Central to achieving self-actualization is the development of self-concept.

• Karen Horney proposed the Psychoanalytic Social Theory.

• Psychoanalytic Social Theory was built on the assumption that social and
cultural conditions are largely responsible for shaping personality.
TWO COMPONENTS OF SELF-CONCEPT:
a. Real Self: consists of all the ideas, including the awareness of
what one is and what one can do.

b. Ideal Self: what one should be or what one aspires to be; the
closer the ideal self to the real self.
• The more fulfilled and happy the individual becomes (NORMAL)
• When the ideal self is far from the real self, the person becomes unhappy
and dissatisfied (NEUROTIC).

The Perceived Self is how person sees self and how others see them.
 THE IDEALIZED SELF-IMAGE

(1) Neurotic search for glory.

(2) Neurotic claims.

(3) Neurotic pride.

• Self-hatred is expressed as either self-contempt or alienation from self.

• Neurotic means someone who shows signs of mental disturbance (anxiety, self-doubt, and other
negative feelings) but does not indicate complete psychosis.
• It gives us more attention to negative outcomes or risks.
DAVID LESTER AND ROY BAUMEISTER:
MULTIPLE VS UNIFIED SELVES
• David Lester
“Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize
him and carry an image of him in their head.”

• Roy Baumeister
“But the concept of the self loses its meaning if a person has multiple selves…the
essence of self involves integration of diverse experiences into a unity…In short,
unity is one of the defining features of selfhood and identity.”

• Unified Self is the integration of the subselves into one, however, integration is
a task for the later part of life.

• Multiple Selves is the diverse subselves representing the identity of a person.

 MULTIPLE UNIFIED

- Big Five Personality Factors - Carl Gustav Jung: Self-realization

a. Neuroticism - Alfred Adler: Striving for success

b. Extraversion
c. Openness to experience - Abraham Maslow: Self actualization
d. Agreeableness
e. Conscientiousness - Carl Rogers: Actualize the
perceived self

- Rollo May: Rediscover selfhood: An

accurate perceived self
 BIG FIVE PERSONALITY
1) Neuroticism- It indicatesFACTORS
a person’s ability to remain stable and balanced.

2) Extraversion: It indicates how outgoing and social a person is.

3) Openness to Experience: It indicates how open-minded and authority-

challenging a person is.

4) Agreeableness: It indicates how warm, friendly and tactful a person is.

5) Conscientiousness: It indicates how self-disciplined and organized a person

is.
 CARL GUSTAV JUNG:
SELF-REALIZATION
• Carl Jung was a the founder of depth psychology. 

• Jung realized that we are guided toward Self-realization by the aims and instincts of the soul.

• Archetypes:  a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally
present in individual psyches (human mind or soul).
• Four major archetypes:
a. Persona- social roles that individuals present to others
b. Shadow- repressed thoughts that are usually unacceptable; dark side of the psyche
c. Anima- feminine side of the male psyche;
Animus- masculine side of the female psyche
d. Self- central archetype
 ALFRED ADLER:
THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION
• Alfred Adler is the founder of individual psychology.

• Striving for superiority or success: single drive or motivating force behind all behavior and experience.

• People striving for superiority with little concern to others are motivated largely by exaggerated feelings
of personal inferiority.

• People striving for superiority with concern to others has more importance for them the social progress
rather than personal credit.
 ABRAHAM MASLOW:
THEORY OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION
• Self-actualization, according to Maslow, represents growth of an individual
toward fulfillment of the highest needs—those for meaning in life, in
particular.
 CARL ROGERS:
ACTUALIZE THE PERCEIVED
SELF
"The organism has one basic tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and enhance the experiencing
organism”
(Rogers, 1951, p. 487).

•  Humans have one basic motive, that is the tendency to self-actualize - i.e., to fulfill one's potential and
achieve the highest level of 'human-beingness' we can.

• Characteristics of a Fully Functioning Person:

• Open to Experience
• Existential Living
• Trust feelings
• Creativity
• Fulfilled life
 ROLLO MAY:
REDISCOVER SELFHOOD: AN ACCURATE PERCEIVED
SELF
• Rollo May is the best known American existential psychologist.

• Rediscovering selfhood involves rediscovering our own feelings and desires

and fighting against those things that prevent us from feeling and wanting.

• Mays theory is not a scientific theory of personality giving us a series of

hypotheses that may be tested by an empirical procedure
• Instead he suggested a philosophical picture of human nature that is coherent, relevant,
comprehensive, and compelling.
 FOUR STAGES OF
CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF:
• Innocence: characteristic of the infant before consciousness of self is born.

• Rebellion : the individual seeks to establish some inner strength where defiance and
hostility is commonplace which we can sometimes see in toddlers.

• Ordinary consciousness of self: stage most people refer to when they speak of a
healthy personality. It involves being able to learn from ones mistakes and live
responsibly.

• Creative consciousness of self: it involves the ability to see something outside ones
usual limited viewpoint and gain a glimpse of ultimate truth as it exists in reality
 DONALD WINNICOTT:
TRUE VS FALSE SELF
• True Self is represented by our real feelings and desires.

• False Self is a side of us that has changed its behavior, repressed feelings
and pushed needs aside in order to survive.

• Healthy false self is described as one which allows someone to be functional in

society.  It enables politeness and social courtesy, even when we may not feel like it.
• Unhealthy false self as one that fits into society through forced compliance rather
than a desire to adapt.

•  We introduced the idea of the onion – the true self at the center protected
by outer layers of false self.
 TRUE SELF FALSE SELF

• Like their bodies • Pessimistic

• Appreciate their qualities • Take no risks

• Do not compare yourself with others • Focus on faults

• Speak kindly • Happy to imitate others

• Proactive • Critical of themselves

• Accept your emotions and know how to • Blaming

express them
• Look defeated and depressed
• Optimistic
• Repress their emotions
• Welcome the praise of others
• Suspicious of praises
• Confident • Compare themselves with Others

• Look for challenge and adventure • Narcissistic

• Think they are important because of their possessions

• Live the present Moment
 DONALD WINNICOTT AND THE FALSE SELF
• Donald Winnicott is best known for the true and false self along
with the relationship between mother and baby.

• Winnicott says that most of the efforts of a person with a very

strong false self are oriented towards the intellectualization
of reality.
• This means that they try to turn reality into something that can be reasoned, but without emotions, affections
or creative acts. 

• When such intellectualization succeeds, the individual is perceived as normal.

• However, he does not experience what he lives out as something that is truly his, but rather as something
alien to him.

• He is never able to feel happy about his successes, nor feel valued even though others may see that
value in him.

• As far as he is concerned, it is his false self who has achieved it or his false self that is being valued. This
just creates a breakdown with himself and with the world.

• His true self is trapped, fantasizing about, and experiencing, a despair that it is never able to understand by
itself.
 B. ALBERT BANDURA:
THE SELF AS PROACTIVE AND
AGENTIC
• Humans through their agency are proactive agents of
experiences.

- Agency: embodies the endowments, belief systems, self-

regulatory capabilities, and distributed structures and functions.

• Personal influence is exercised, rather than reside as a discrete entity.

• The core features of agency enable people to play a part in the self
development, adaptation and self renewal.
 MAIN FEATURES OF HUMAN AGENCY
1. Intentionality: acts done intentionally; plans of actions with the anticipation of possible
outcomes.

2. Forethought: enables the person to anticipate the likely consequences of prospective

actions.

3. Self-reactiveness: making choices and choosing appropriate course of action as well as

motivating and regulating them.

4. Self-reflectiveness: give the person the ability to reflect upon and the adequacy of his or
her own thoughts and actions; people are not only agents of actions but also self-examiners of
their own functioning.
• Efficacy Beliefs: foundation of human agency; plays a role in self-regulation.

• Self-Efficacy: individual’s belief that he or she is capable to perform a task which

influences whether he or she will think pessimistically or optimistically.

• Self-regulation: ability of an individual to control his or her behavior without having to

rely on others for him/her.

BANDURA’S CONCEPT ON SELF REGULATION

a. Self-observation: monitor our own performance.
b. Judgmental Process: self-evaluation
c. Self-reaction: create incentives for our own actions through self reinforcement or self-
punishment.