PSYCHOLOGY

Understanding The Self

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?
■ Psyche – soul & Logos – to study
■ Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. It
encompasses the biological influences, social pressure,
and environmental factors. That affect how people
Think, act and feel.
THE GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY
The four main goals of psycholoy are to describe, explain, predict and
change the behavior and mental processes of others.
■ To Describe
- Describing the behavior or cognition is the first goal of psychology.
This can enable researchers to develop general laws of human behavior.
■ To Explain
- Once researchers have described general laws behavior, the next
step is to explain how or why this trend occurs. Psychologist will propose
themselves which can explain a behavior.
■ To Predict
- Psychology aims to be able to predict future behavior from the
findings of empirical research. If a prediction is not confirmed, then the
explanation of it is based on might need to be revised.
■ To Change
- Once the psychologist has described, explained and made
predictions, about behavior, changing or controlling a behavior can be
attempted.
 Throughout psychology’s history, various school of thought have formed
to explain the human mind and behavior. In some cases, certain schools of
thought rose to dominate the field of psychology For a period of time.
The following are some off the major schools of thought in psychology.
■ Structuralism – Wundt and Titchener’s structuralism was the earliest
school of thought, but others soon began to emerge.
■ Functionalism – The early psychologist and philosopher, William James,
become associated with a school of thoughtknown as functionalism,
which focused its attention on the purpose of human conciousness and
behavior.
■ Psychoanalysis – These initials school of thought gave away to several
dominent and influencial approaches to psychology. Sigmund Freuds
psychoanalysis centered on how the unconsciousmind impacted human
behavior.
■ Behaviorism – The behavioral school of thought turned away from
looking at internal influences on behavior.
■ Humanistic Psychology – The humanistic approach centered on the
importance of personal growth and self-actualization.
■ Cognitive Psychology – The cognitive revolution sporred the
investigation of internal mental processes sych as thinking, decision
making, language development, and memory.
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGY
■ Abnormal Psychology
■ Biological Psychology
■ Clinical Psychology
■ Cognitive Psychology
■ Comparative Psychology
■ Development Psychology
■ Forensic Psychology
■ Industrial-organizational Psychology
■ Personality Psychology
■ Social Psychology
 A. THE SELF AS
COGNITIVE
CONSTRUCTION
INTRODUCTION:

■ Modern researchers acknowledge the contributions of the

different fields in the concept of self.
■ In Psychology, it is thought that it’s only focus is on the
cognitive functions.
■ But it does not discount the context and the other possible
factors That may affect the individual.
■ The self is the energy created by your physical machine with
many parts and processes required for it to be and to function.
It’s the result of whatever maintenance and attention given to
the physical machine, which is emanated off of your construct,
to connect to, and communicate with, the other physical
machines out there in the space around you. The self is maybe
all the space in between the visible fractal lines of creation just
as true music is the space between the notes.
SELF

■ It is the sense of personal identity and who we are as individual.

(Jhangiani and Tarry 2014)

WILLIAM JAMES (1890)

■ One of the earliest psychologist to study self. He conceptualized the self

as having two aspects, the “I” and “ME”.
TWO ASPECTS OF SELF:
I – The thinking, acting and feeling self. (Gleitman, Gross, and
Reisberg 2011; Haugg and Vaughan 2010)
ME – The physical characteristics as well as psychological
capabilities that makes you who you are. (Gleitman, Gross, and
Reisberg 2011; Haugg and Vaughan 2010)

Personality Theory also used the same term, the I as the one
who acts decide while ME is what I think about my self as an
object.
Other concept of Self: IDENTITY &
SELF-CONCEPTS
IDENTITY
■ Is composed of personal characteristics, social roles and responsibilities,
as well as affiliations that define who one is.
SELF-CONCEPT
■ Is what basically comes to your mind when you are (Oyserman, Elmore,
and Smith 2012)
Self identity and self-concept are not fixed in one time frame, they are also
not fixed for life nor they are ever changing at every moment.
SCHEMA – A mental structures that an individual uses to organize
knowledge and guide cognitive proces and behavior.
COMPONENTS OF SELF:
Hobbies, religion, nationality, and family.
Schema is not limited to examples above, this may also include your
interests, works, name, age, and physical characters.
SELF-SCHEMA – Refers to the impression that you have to yourself and
how they influenced your behavior.
What is the function of self-schema?
■ These categories of knowledge reflects how we expect our self to think,
feel, and act in particular systemor collection of knowledge about who
we are.
CARL ROGER
■ Captured the idea in his concept of SELF-SCHEMA, for him it is our
organized system of collection of knowledge about who we are.
Theories generally see the self and identity as mental constructs, created and
reacted in memory. (Oyserman, Elmore, and Smith 2012)
Several psychologist looking deeper into the mind of the person to theorize
about the self, identity, and concept in turn one’s personality.
The most influential of them is Sigmund Freud. Freud saw the self, it’s
mental processes, and one’s behavior as the result of interaction between the
Id, Ego, and Superego.
One cannot full discount the effects of society and culture on the in
information of self, identity, and self-concept even Freud and other
researcher and theories, try to understand the person by digging deeper into
the mind.
• William James and the Me-self; I-self

“I am who I am.”

If you are who you are, then who are you that makes you who
you are?
“Self is the sense of personal identity and who are we as
individual.”
- Jhangiani and Tarry (2014)
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910)

■ Was an american philosopher, historian, and psychologist and

the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United
States.
■ James is considered to be a leading thinker of the late
nineteenth century, one of the most influential philosopher of
the United States.
■ William James is the father of American psychology in 1890,
he distinguished two understanding of the self; The Self as Me
and The Self as I. This he call the concept of self.
What is I-Self?
■ Refers to the self that knows who he or she is.
■ Thinking, acting and feeling self.
■ Reflects the soul of a person or what is now thought of as the mind and is
called the pure ego.

What is Me-Self?

■ The empirical self.

■ Refers to decribing the person’s personal experiences and further divided
into sub-categories.
1. Natural Self – It consist of one body, valued possessions and love cues. It
identifies the self most clearly in terms of material possession.
2. Social Self – It consist of the recognition that the self can get from
others. James believed that the people have several social me’s.
3. Spiritual Self – One’s own understanding of selves as creatures who
think, feel, act, and experience life.

A man’s self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and
his physic, but his clothes and his house.
- William James -
• Global vs. Differentiated Models

GLOBAL
■ Refers to the general value that a person places on himself or
herself.
DIFFERENTIATED SELF
■ Refers to your ability to separate your own feelings and
thoughts from others.
10 DIFFERENTIATED MODELS OF
SELF
■ Self Conciousness – Is a hightened sense of self-awareness.
■ Self Multiple – Someone’s role is to not stop being his or her
responsibilities and self of sense.
■ Self as Looking-Glass
- Other people serve as a mirror in which we can see ourselves.
- People develop a sense of WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT TO THINK
OF THEMSELVES by watching the reactions of the people in their
“primary group” as well as they meet throughout their lives.
- We ourselves through the eyes of other people even to the extent of
incorporating their views of us into our own self-concept.
i.e: Teenagers are strongly influenced by their peers and will go beyond
conforming to changing their self image to match.
■ Self Structure – The self, as that which can be an object to itself, is
essential a social structure and it arises in social experience.
■ Self as Flower – The self in this view is like a flower, potentially growing
into full bloom.
■ Self as Self-Creative – “Man is nothing else but what he makes to
himself.” Rejecting any traditional, essential idea of human nature, Sartre
adds: “In other words, there is freedom.” To clarify: “You are nothing less
than your life.” combining all your projects, actions, and chores. The self,
in his view, is not an iceberg, nor a passive reflection, bor a flower that
may grow; it is what we make it but it is somewhat atomistic.
■ Self as Onion – This model is indicated by the phrase “hidden depths”
and reflects the notion that one may not really know someone, just the
GOFFMANESQUE presentation of the different selves acting in different
roles and circumstances, which may be camouflage and masks.
■ Self as Identity – Our self concept is our identity It is the concept you
develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may
include the aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as
where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make
in life, such as how you spend time and what you believe.
■ Self as Unicorn – It is party unknown, even unknowable because it is so
below conciousness and in progress.
■ Self as Chameleon – Chameleon because it is multiple, mutable,
adaptable, and selective in presentation. These selves may be
complimentary, contradictory or conflicted.

SELF CONCEPT
■ Is defined as the totality of individual thoughts and feelings having
reference to her/his as an object.
■ Lifestyle, in many ways, is an outward expression of one’s self-concept.
Carl Rogers SELF THEORY
REAL SELF
■ The REAL SELF is who we actually are. Its is how we think, how we
feel, look and act. The real self can be seen by others, but because we
have no way of truly knowing how others views us, the real self is our
self-image
IDEAL SELF
■ The IDEAL SELF is how we want to be. It is an idealized image that we
have developed over time based on what we have learned and
experienced. The ideal self could include components of what our parents
have taught us, what we admire in others, what our society promotes, and
what we think is in our best interest.
• Multiple vs. Unified Self
What is Multiple Self?
■ Multiple selves varies across different interpersonal and
intrepersonal rules and relationships, the attitude and
characteristics we show depends on who are the people we are
interacting with.
■ A psychoanalytic concept of the self as composed of may
different affective, perceptual, and cognitive features.
■ Theories of personality reveal the influence of two themes:
human behavior is determined in past, and some believes
completely, by stimuli in the environment.
What is Unified Self?
■ Unified self is a personality that stays within us, the self we
usually only show to people we trust and whenever we are
alone.
■ Unified self is a means of referring to the “composite”
persona, or to the “self” that contains all of the other personas
that exists within a person’s interactional style.
■ It is the integration of the sub selves into one, however,
integration is a task for the later part of our life.
• True vs. False Self
TRUE SELF
■ The true self is represented by our real feelings and desires .
■ The true self – the child’s real feelings needs desires and thought – is
pushed further and further inside the onion.
■ We still have all of these feelings, needs, desires and thoughts, its just
that the adapted self dominates it.
■ There are many times in our day to day lives when it would be harmful to
us to let our true self dominate. For instance, we don’t bare our deepest
feelings and thoughts while at work. That kind of vulnerability would not
only demonstrate a lack of boundaries but would also open us up to
potential attack from others who might not treat our feeling with
acceptance.
FALSE SELF
■ It is a side of us that has changes its behavior, repressed feelins and
pushed needs aisde in order to survive.
There are two types of false self, the healthy false self and unhealthy false
self.
1. Healthy False Self – It 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.
2. Unhealthy False Self – It comes from same origin as the healthy
including narcissism and adduction. D.W. Winnicott defines unhealthy
false self as one that fits into society through force compliance rather
than a desire to adapt.
Real life examples of false self are based around certain beliefs
that we take on in order to fit into our world better.
■ If I am pretty, I will be more likeable.
■ If I work hard/achieve more, I will have more value.

All of these beliefs are false self beliefs.

 “When we are aware of the many sides of
ourselves, we are able to gain a sense of ownership
and mastery over when and how we choose to
show these sides. When we are in control of what
part of ourselves we choose to show, the false self
is no longer foreign and detached: our social
masks become congruent and integrated. We are
whole.”
 B. THE SELF AS
PROACTIVE AND
AGENTIC
Proactive and Agentic Self
PROACTIVE SELF
■ Proactivity or proactive behavior refers to self-initiated behavior that
endeavors to solve a problem before it has occurred.
■ Proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather
than reacting.
AGENTIC SELF
■ The Agentic self is defined as the aspect of human personality that is
determined by future assessments of one’s goal, objectives and action.
■ A unified Agentic self is composed of different cognitive components
that influenced the overall personality and futue aspirations of an
individual.
 Albert Bandura
(Dec. 4, 1925 – July 26, 2021)
■ A Canadian-American psychologist who was the David Starr Jordan
Professor Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford
University.
■ Believes that through our agency we humans are perceived as proactive
agents of experiences.
■ According to him, humans have the ability to act, They are able to
produce experiences on their own.
■ Social Learning Theory was proposed by him, it emphasizes the
importance of observing, modelling, and imitating the behavior, attitude,
and emotional reaction of others.
■ He introduced the main agents which are intentionality, forethought,
self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness.
INTENATIONALITY
■ Actions performed by the person with full awareness
of his behavior.
■ It is to do an act in your own free will, intentionality
enables the individual to experience his/her
experiences since it is according to his/her accord.
■ Refers to acts that we do intentionally and you know
already the possible outcome.
■ It is the willingness of a person to do a certain thing.
FORETHOUGHT

■ Person’s anticipation of likely outcomes of his

behavior.
■ Enables the doer of an action to anticipate the
outcome of their actions.
Self-reactiveness

■ Process in which the person is motivated and regulates

his behavior as he observes his progress in achieving
his goals.
■ Is the ability an individual to make his/her choices and
choose the right courses of action, as well as motivate
and regulate their execution.
Self-reflectiveness
■ The person looking inward and evaluating his
motivations, values, life-goals, and other people’s
effect him.
■ Is the ability of an individual to reflect upon oneself
and the adequacy of one’s thoughts and actions.
■ Gives us the ability to reflect on our lack of thoughts
and actions. We are also self-examiners. We give time
to our self to think about or experiences and decisions
that we made.