Understanding the Self - Summary Notes

The Self, Society, and Culture

What is the Self?

  • Separate: Distinct from other selves, unique identity.
  • Self-contained: Can exist independently with its own thoughts and characteristics.
  • Independent: Does not require any other self to exist.
  • Consistent: Traits and characteristics are relatively the same.
  • Unitary: Center of experiences and thoughts.
  • Private: Isolated from the external world.

Two Faces of the Self

  • Personne: Related to living in a particular institution, family, religion, and nationality.
  • Moi: A person’s sense of who he is, his body, and biological givenness.

Theories of the Social Self

  • Vygotsky: Self emerges from social interactions.
  • Harry Stack Sullivan Self –System: Behavior maintains interpersonal security by protecting from anxiety.
  • Mead: Acquiring a Self, the Process of Self-Constitution: The Self is a product of socialization.

Mead - Development of Self

  • Language: Develops self by allowing individuals to respond to each other through symbols.
  • Play: Develops self by allowing individuals to take on different roles.
  • Games: Develops self by allowing individuals to understand and adhere to the rules.
  • Personification:
    • GOOD ME: Experiences that are rewarded.
    • BAD ME: Consists of experiences that are punished.
  • Significant Others: Individuals a person is intimate with.
  • Generalized Others: The attitude of the whole community.

Two Sides of Self: Me & I

  • 'Me': Socialized aspect of the individual, learned behaviors, attitudes, and expectations of others and society; the past phase of the self.
  • 'I': Unsocialized self, responds on an ongoing basis; the present and future phase of the self.

Culture

  • Definition: "Culture is the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, law, art, moral, custom, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."
  • Language: the site where the individual and the social make and remake each other.

Development of the Social World - MEAD and VYGOTSKY

  • Human persona develop with the use of language acquisition and interaction with others.
  • Self in Families: Human persons learn the ways of living and therefore their selfhood by being in a family, it initiates what a person to become that serves as the basis of a person’s progress.

Gender and the Self

  • Gender has to be personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by culture and society.

A Socio-Cultural View of Knowing Oneself

  • Karen Horney: Social and cultural conditions are largely responsible for the formation of one’s personality.
  • Interaction Styles:
    1. Moving towards people: compliance, dependence.
    2. Moving against people: hostility and aggression.
    3. Moving away from people: isolation, privacy.

Horney - Views of the Self:

  1. The real self – is a person’s actual and current being.
  2. The ideal self – is an imagined fantasy that promises a sense of positive identity, thus it is called the “impossible self”.

Identity

  • Identity Formation: Moves and grows throughout life as people confront new challenges.

Famous Theories of Identity Formation

  • Eric Erickson: Identity versus Role Confusion
  • James Marcia: Four Statuses of identity
  • Charles H. Cooley: “Looking-glass self
  • George H. Mead: Taking the role of the other
  • Rom Harre and Langenhove: Positioning Theory
  • Erich S. Fromm : Identity as one of the psychological needs

ERIK ERIKSON : PSYCHOSOCIAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

  • Identity vs. Role Confusion: Adolescents search for a sense of self through exploration.

Marcia’s Four Statutes of Identity

  • Identity Foreclosure: Blindly accepted values without exploring alternatives.
  • Identity Achievement: Strong commitment to beliefs after active exploration.
  • Identity Moratorium: Actively exploring identity and values without commitment.
  • Identity Diffusion: Have not attempted to find their identity.

Charles H. Cooley: “Looking-glass self

  • A person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.

George H. Mead: TAKING THE ROLE OF OTHER PEOPLE

  • Seeing the world through another’s eyes.

Erich S. Fromm : Identity as one of the psychological needs

  • Need to develop one’s uniqueness.

Rom Harre and Langenhove: Positioning Theory

  • Identity is a product of positioning within a discourse.
  • Positioning: the discursive process whereby people located in conversation.