CHAPTER I  Soul – spiritual bliss and eternal  What is a thinking thing according to

communion with God Rene? “It is a thing that doubts,

Socrates
 Goal of every human is to commune and understands (conceives), affirms, denies,
 The first philosopher who engaged in a attain bliss w/ the Divine by living in virtue wills, refuse, imagines, and perceives
systematic questioning about the self on earth
David Hume
 Every man is composed of Body and Soul
Thomas Aquinas
 Dualistic Approach – two aspects of  Scottish Philosopher/Empiricist
personhood  Man is composed of two parts:  Empiricism – knowledge can only be
 Body – All individuals have an imperfect  Matter – (hyle in Greek) common stuff possible if it is sensed and experienced
and impermanent aspects that makes up everything in the  Self – bundle of impression
 Soul – perfect and permanent universe.  Two Categories of Experience:
 Form – (morphe in Greek) essence of a  Impressions – basic objects of our
Plato substance or thin experience or sensation; form the core
 The examined life is not worth living  The Soul animates the Body, it is what of our thoughts
makes us humans  Product of our direct experience
 Supported Socrates in his dualistic
with the world
approach Rene Descartes  Ideas – copies of impression
 3 Components of the Soul – Magnum
 Father of Modern Philosophy  Feeling of being in love
Opus (The Republic)
 Rational Soul – reasons and intellect  “The Mediations of First Philosophy” –
 Spirited Soul – emotion there is so much that we should doubt
 Appetitive Soul – desires (eating, etc.)  The Existence of Self, a thing that think,
cannot be doubted
Agustine  Cogito ergo sum – “I think, therefore I
 Fusion of the Doctrine of Christianity and am”
the ancient view of Plato  Self is a combination of two distinct entities:
 “Bifurcated” Nature – aspect of men:  Cogito – thing that thinks, which is the
 dwells in the world, imperfect and mind
yearns to be with the Divine  Extenza – extension of the mind,
 capable of reaching immortality which is the body
 Body – bound to die on earth  Body – a machine that is attached to the
mind
 CHAPTER II  The Self is truly multifaceted  For Mead, a child conceptualizes his notion
of self through the other
Self – Separate, Self-contained, independent, Marcel Mauss
 Vygotsky a child internalizes real life
consistent, unitary, and private
 French Anthropologist dialogs that he has had with others.
 Separate – self is distinct from other selves,  The Two Faces of Self: Self in Families
unique and has its own identity  Moi – person’s sense of who he is, his
body and his basic identity  The impact of one’s family is still deemed
ONE CANNOT BE ANOTHER PERSON
 Personne – social concepts of what it as a given in understanding self
 Self-contained and Independent – in itself means to be who he is  Human persons are one of those being
can exist; self-contained with its own  What it means to live in a whose importance of family cannot be
thoughts, characteristics, and volition particular institution, particular denied
family, particular religion, etc.  Human beings are born virtually helpless
DOESN’T REQUIRE ANY OTHER SELF  Language has something to do with culture and the dependency period of a human
 If a Self is born into a particular culture of baby to its parents for nurturing is
 Consistent – it’s personality is enduring and
society, the Self will have to adjust relatively longer than most of other
expected to persist that allows it to be
studied, described, and measured  One is believed to be in active participation animals
in the shaping of the self  Family serves as the basis for this person’s
 Unitary – center of all experiences and
thoughts that run through a certain person  Language as both a publicly shared and progress
privately utilized symbol system is the site  Babies – Imitating
 Private – each person sorts out information,
where the individual and the social make  Language of its primary agents of
feeling, and emotions, and thought
and remake each other rearing its family, babies learn the
processes within the self; isolated from the
language
external world MEAD and VYGOTSKY
Gender and The Self
Social Constructionist Perspective  The way the human person develop is with
the use of Language acquisition and Gender – one of those loci of the self that is
 Relationship between self and external
interaction with others subject to alteration, change, and development
reality
 The way we process information is normally
 Merged view of “the person” and their GENDER HAS TO BE PERSOALLY
a form of an internal dialogue in our head
‘social context’ where the boundaries of one DISCOVERED AND ASSERTED
cannot be easily separated from the other  Exposure to these dialogs will eventually
become part of his individual world such as
 Self is not a Static Entity that stays constant,
values, norms, practices, and social beliefs
it is seen as an unceasing flux
 CHAPTER III Concepts Similar to Self  Social interaction always has a part in who
we are
The Self as a Cognitive Construct Identity – composed of personal
characteristics, social roles, and Symbolic Interactionism
Johari Window responsibilities, as well as affiliations that
define who one is  Mead argued that the self is created and
 Open Self – information about you that both
developed through human interaction
and others know Self-Concept – what basically comes to your  Three Reasons Why Self and Identity are
 Blind Self – information about you that you mind when you are asked about who you are Social Products
don’t know but others do know
1. We do not create ourselves out of
 Hidden Self – information about you that  Self, Identity, and Self-concept are not
nothing
you know but others don’t know fixed in one time frame
2. We actually need other to affirm and
 Unknown Self – information about you that reinforce who we think we are
Self-Schema
neither you nor others know 3. What we think is important to us may
 Organized system or collection of also have been influenced by what is
Self – is the sense of personal identity and of
knowledge about who we are important in our social or historical
who we are as individuals
 Road map on how we understand things context
William James  Education, Money, etc.
Brain
 Social Interaction and Group Affiliation –
 One of the earliest psychologist to study the
Frontal Lobe as the specific area in the brain vital factors creating our self-concept
self
associated with the processes concerning the providing us with our social identity
 Two Aspects of Self:
self.
 “I” – thinking, acting and feeling self Self-Awareness
 “Me” – physical characteristics as well Phineas Gage – man who got impaled in the
as psychological capabilities that  Two types of self that we can be aware of:
frontal lobe of the brain at an accident
makes you who you are 1. Private Self – internal standards and
Sigmund Freud private thoughts and feelings
Carl Rogers 2. Public Self – public image geared
 The self, its mental processes, and one’s towards having a good presentation of
 Roger’s theory of personality also used that behaviour as the result of the interaction yourself to others
terms: between the Id, the Ego, and Superego  Three Other Self-schema
 “I” – one who acts and decides  One cannot fully discount the huge and  Actual Self – who you are at the
 “Me” – what you think and feel about important effects of the environment moment
yourself as an object
 Ideal Self – who you like to be
  Ought Self – who you think you should  Usually act in Three Ways:
be  We distance ourselves
 Reconsider the importance of the aspect
Deindividuation – the loss of individual self-
or skill in which you were outperformed
awareness and individual accountability
 Strengthen or resolve to improve
 Group identity and Self-awareness also Narcissism – trait characterized by overly high
has a great impact on our Self-esteem self-esteem, self-admiration, and self-
 One of the ways in which our social centeredness
relationship affects our self-esteem is
through social comparison. Positive Self-Esteem (High Self-Esteem)

Social Comparison Theory – we learn about  Outgoing

themselves, the appropriateness of our  Adventurous
behaviours, as well as our social status by  Adaptable
comparing aspects of ourselves to others  Initiate Activities and Builds Relationships
Downward Social Comparison Negative Self-Esteem (High Self-Esteem)
 More common type of comparing ourselves  Bullies
with others  Experiment on Abusive Behaviour
 Create positive self-concept by comparing
ourselves with those who are worse off than
us

Upward Social Comparison

 Comparing ourselves with those who are

better than us
 Can be a form of motivation

Social Evaluation Maintenance Theory

 We feel threatened when someone out-

performs us, especially when that person is
close to us (family and friends)