WEEK 4: THE SELF ACCORDING PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology

Psychology is a scientific study of mental processes and human

behavior. It aims to describe, analyze, predict, control human
behavior in general. Self is an essential construct in psychology
because it fulfills the goals of the discipline in studying human and
the reason for their action. Many psychologists tried to define the
origin of mental processes and behavior but they all settle down
with numerous theories and assumptions. The following
descriptions on the formation of self were presented for you to
have a clear picture on
the psychological perspective of self.
The Self as Cognitive Construction

 The cognitive aspect of the self is known as self-concept. Self-concept is defined as self-
knowledge, a cognitive structure that includes beliefs about personality traits, physical
characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that an individual exist
as individuals. As humans grow and develop, self-concept becomes abstract and more complex.
 According to the psychologist Dr. Bruce A. Bracken in 1992, there are six specific domains that
are related to self-concept these are:
1) the social domain or the ability of the person to interact with others;
2) the competence domain or the ability to meet the basic needs;
3) the affect domain or the awareness of the emotional states;
4) the physical domain or the feelings about looks, health, physical condition, and overall
appearance;
5) academic domain or the success or failure in the school; and
6) family domain or how well one function within the family unit.

William James and the Me-Self and I-Self

  William James is a well-known figure in Psychology
who is considered as the founder of functionalism. He brought
prominence to U.S. psychology through the publication of The
Principles of Psychology (1890) that made him more
influential than his contemporaries in the field.
 James made a clear distinction between ways of
approaching the self – the knower (the pure or the I – Self) and
the known (the objective or the Me – Self). The function of the
knower (I-Self) according to James must be the agent of
experience. While the known (Me-Self) have three different
but interrelated aspects of empirical self (known today as self-
concept): the Me viewed as material, the Me viewed as social,
and the Me viewed as spiritual in nature.
 The material self is consists of everything an individual
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call uniquely as their own, such as the body, family, home or
style of dress. On the other hand, social self refers to the
recognition an individual get from other people. Lastly,
spiritual self refers to the individual inner or subjective being.

Real and Ideal Self

Carl Rogers
 Carl Rogers is best known as the founder of client-
centered therapy and considered as one of the prominent
humanistic or existential theorists in personality. His therapy
aimed to make the person achieve balance between their self-
concept (real-self) and ideal self.
 The real self includes all those aspects of one's identity
that are perceived in awareness. These are the things that are
known to oneself like the attributes that an individual
possesses.
 The ideal self is defined as one’s view of self as one
wishes to be. This contains all the aspirations or wishes of an
individual for themselves.
 A wide gap between the ideal self and the self-concept
indicates incongruence and an unhealthy personality.
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Psychologically healthy individuals perceive little discrepancy
between their self-concept and what they ideally would like to
be.

Multiple versus Unified Self

 According to Multiple Selves Theory, there are different aspects of the self exist in an individual.
From here, we can say that self is a whole consist of parts, and these parts manifest themselves when
need arise.
 Gregg Henriques proposed the Tripartite Model of Human Consciousness, wherein he described that
self is consist of three related, but also separable domains these are the experimental self, private
self, and public self.
 o The experiential self or the theater of consciousness is a domain of self that defined as felt
experience of being. This includes the felt consistency of being across periods of time. It is tightly
associated with the memory. This is a part of self that disappears the moment that an individual
enter deep sleep and comes back when they wake up.
o The private self consciousness system or the narrator/interpreter is a portion of self that verbally
narrates what is happening and tries to make sense of what is going on. The moment that you read
this part, there is somewhat like a “voice” speaking in your head trying to understand what this
concept is all about.
o Lastly, the public self or Persona, the domain of self that an individual shows to the public, and
this interacts on how others see an individual. Henriques’ Tripartite Model attempts to capture the
key domains of consciousness, both within the self and between others.
 Unified being is essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency. A well-adjusted
person is able to accept and understood the success and failure that they experienced. They are
those kinds of person who continually adjust, adapt, evolve and survive as an individual with
integrated, unified, multiple selves.

True versus False Self

Donald Winnicott

 Donald Winnicott was a pediatrician in London who

studied Psychoanalysis with Melanie Klein, a renowned
personality theorist and one of the pioneers in object relations
and development of personality in childhood.
 According to him, false self is an alternative personality
used to protect an individual’s true identity or one’s ability to
“hide” the real self. The false self is activated to maintain social
relationship as anticipation of the demands of others.
Compliance with the external rules or following societal norms
is a good example of this. false self can be a healthy self if it is
perceived as functional for the person and for the society and
being compliant without the feeling of betrayal of true self. On
the other hand, unhealthy false self happens when an individual
feels forced compliance in any situation.
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 On the contrary, true self has a sense of integrity and

connected wholeness that is rooted in early infancy. The baby
creates experiences of a sense of reality and sense of life worth living. Winnicott claimed that true
self can be achieved by good parenting that is not necessarily a perfect parenting.

The Self as Proactive and Agentic

Albert Bandura
  Albert Bandura is a psychologist and Professor
Emeritus of Social Science in Psychology at
Stanford University. He is known for his theory of
social learning by means of modeling. He is
famous for his proposed concept of self- efficacy.
 His personality theory, The Social Cognitive
Theory asserts that a person is both proactive and
agentic, which means that we have the capacity to
exercise control over our life. This theory
emphasized that human beings are proactive, self-
regulating, self-reflective, and self- organizing.
 Self as proactive means an individual have
control in any situation by making things happen.
They act as agent in doing or making themselves
as they are. Agency is a defining feature of
modern selfhood. Agents assume some degree of
ownership and control over things, both internally
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(I control my own thoughts) and externally (I
make things happen in the environment). The
ability of an individual to pursue their goals in life
is an example of agentic approach to self.
 According to Bandura (1989), self-efficacy
beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate
themselves and
behave. Such beliefs produce these diverse effects through four major processes. They
include cognitive, motivational, affective and selection processes. A strong sense of efficacy
enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways.
 In contrast Bandura (1989) said that people who doubt their capabilities shy away from
difficult tasks which they view as personal threats. They have low aspirations and weak
commitment to the goals they choose to pursue. When faced with difficult tasks, they dwell
on their personal deficiencies, on the obstacles they will encounter, and all kinds of adverse
outcomes rather than concentrate on how to perform successfully. They fall easy victim to
stress and depression.