Understanding the Self ; Mid-Term
Frederick Copleston (Famous history of Philosophy)
Philosophical View of the Self
Philosophy
- Sought to answer life’s difficult questions
- Has relentlessly pursued answers to these no matter how
seemingly futile the quest may be.
✓ “Who Am I?”
✓ What exactly are we?
✓ What do we mean by the “Self”?
- Aimed at unraveling who man is.
Self Concept. An idea of the self-constructed from the beliefs one
holds about oneself.
Self Knowledge. Understanding of oneself.
Self-Esteem. Confidence in one’s own worth or abilities.
Social Self. One’s identity or self concept that are important to or
influenced by interpersonal relationships.
Great Minds From Our History (Summary)
Socrates, Plato, St. Augustine - The self is an immortal soul that
exists over time.
Descartes - The self is a thinking being, distinct from the body.
John Locke - Personal identity is made possible by
self-consciousness.
David Hume - There is no self, only a bundle of constantly
changing perceptions passing through the theater of our minds
(temporary impression).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - The self is embodied subjectivity, his
concept is more on movements and expressions.
Paul Churchland - The self is the brain, Mental states will be
superseded by brain states.
Gilbert Ryle - The self is the way people behave.
Sigmund Freud - The self is multi-layered.
Immanuel Kant - The self is a unifying subject, an organizing
consciousness that makes intelligible experience possible.
Philosophy (Continuation)
- Love of Wisdom, philo-sophia
- KNOW THYSELF (self-control), ancient greeting of the highly
civilized Greeks.
- About quantifiable facts
- Philosophers insisted it is more than just basic facts.
- Imperative and Requirement
- Imperative to know the limits of the self.
- Requirement for self-moderation, prudence, good
judgement, and excellence of the soul.
Ancient Greeks - The soul is the essence of the person.
Socrates (Forerunner of Western Philosophy)
- A scholar, teacher, and Philosopher
- Known as the MARKET PHILOSOPHER
- He was accused of corrupting the minds of the youth of
Athens and was sentenced to death, he then chose death
instead of to be exiled.
- Emmanuel Kant
“Face the adversities of life calmly & squarely rather than feeling
like chickens when faced with storms in life.”
- Philosophy must obtain practical results for the greater
well-being of society.
∟ Acquisition of wisdom through knowing one’s self.
“Ultimate wisdom comes from knowing oneself”
- Socrates refers to soul as a thinking and willing subject
- It is the intellectual and moral personality of humans.
- The soul (Self) is a responsible agent in knowing ethics.
“Take care of your soul to attain a good life.” -Socrates
State if the soul refers to the person’s inner being which
determines the quality of one’s life.
“True self is the Virtuous Life”
Plato
- The experience of examining oneself eventually better
understand the core of the self which he called Psyche.
Parts of Human Soul:
The Rational: Reason
The Spirited: Honor
The Appetite: Desire
Psyche is composed of 3 elements:
- Appetitive. One’s desires and pleasures.
- Will or Spirited. Excited when given challenges.
- Mind. Superior of all elements
- Nouns. Conscious awareness of the self.
St. Augustine
- The development of the self is achieved through
self-presentation & self-realization.
- Realization of the wasted self is achieved through conversion
to the faith.
- Man’s end goal is happiness.
A MODERN PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF
Rene Descartes (Father of Modern Philosophy)
- Claimed that we cannot really rely on our senses as sense
perception can deceive us.
- He doubts everything.
Four Rules:
Only accept clear and distinct ideas.
Divide each problem.
Order your thoughts.
Always check for oversights.
- “Cogito ergo sum”, I think therefore I am or I doubt therefore I
exist.
- Self is a thinking being.
John Locke (British Philosopher and a Politician)
- He opposed the idea of Descartes.
- Self is comparable to an empty space.
- Experience contributes to the pile of knowledge.
- Experience is needed to have sense data, through the
process of reflection and analysis.
- Primary qualities: quantitative facts.
- Secondary qualities: elements that are distinguishable
by the subjective individual.
David Hume (Scottish Philosopher and Historian)
- There is no self
- All ideas are derived from expressions
- Humans are just bundles of temporary impressions.
- We construct the self.
- Self is always prussian metaphysicist transcendental.
- Man is a free agent capable of making decisions for himself.
Sigmund Freud
- There are two selves, one conscious and one unconscious.
- Man is a combination of biological structure (ID) and the
influence of his socio-cultural environment (SUPEREGO). It
manifests the ego, in which is being the self.
 - Topological Model: a person may both know and do not know
certain things at the same time.
Gilbert Ryle (British Philosopher)
- The self is how you behave.
- The mind is never separate from the body.
- Physical actions or behaviors are dispositions of the self.
- Mind is nothing but a disposition of the self.
- “I act therefore I am” or “You are what you do”
Paul and Patricia Churchland
- The self is the brain.
- Eliminative materialism
- Mind is unreal and the brain is real.
- Mind, moods, emotions, actions, and consciousness are
deeply affected by the state of the brain.
- A new conceptual framework should be based on
neuroscience.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (French Philosopher)
- The self is embodied subjectivity.
- There is unity in our mental, physical, and emotional
disposition.
- The virtue of movement and expression.
Socio and Anthro Perspectives
Sociology. the scientific study of human life, social groups, whole
societies and the human world whose subject matter is our own
behavior as social beings in relationship with many other people.
Self-Concept. the content of self-awareness.
- An integrated set of vital ideas and feelings about self,
including self-esteem.
- The mental image one had of oneself.
- The idea that you have about the kind of person you are.
Self-Esteem. the evaluation of the self.
- The degree to which it is seen as positive or negative.
- The resulting feelings about oneself.
- A confidence and satisfaction in oneself.
- A feeling of having respect for yourself and your abilities.
The Self as Products of Modern Society AMong Other Construct
Generation. a subculture of people who experience similar social
phenomena at a certain period of time.
- They share common themes with regard to values,
norms, behaviors, and cognition (how they think).
Cohorts. a group of people used in a study who have something in
common.
Baby Boomers (Born after World War II). They are characterized as:
independent, conservative,and traditional.
Generation X (Born between 1970-1980). They are characterized as:
cynical, untrusting, individualistic, competent, technical, and
diverse.
- Called xennials
- Experienced an analogue childhood and a digital adulthood.
Generation Y (Born between). Deemed as the most controversial
of the generational cohorts, they are characterized as: responsible,
independent, fast-thinker, entrepreneurial, achievement-oriented,
confident with technology. They are also: self-entitled, fast-paced,
bossy, narcissistic, and lazy.
- Also known as millennials
- They are products of modern society
- They set the trends most specially on internet platforms and
media and are affected by this.
Generation Z (Post Millennial). They are characterized as:
technologically savvy, sophisticated, educated, more on gadgets,
smarter, connected.
The self becomes delocalized with modernization, which seeks its
own identity.
Inauthentic Self. an increasing trend for society to dictate proper
cultural norms and values, the self becomes dependent on it,
resulting in losing its independent form.
Android Self. society becomes like a big marketplace wherein one
chooses what to conform to.
* Stability of one’s self-identity is no longer based on a pre-given
traditional broad definition of the self.
* The world is socially constructed; learned meanings and behavior
are the most direct cause of human behavior.
Social Construction of the Self
- Self is not discovered; it is made through the socialization
process.
- Self is acquired socially based on our social roles.
Authenticity
- One of the constructs most emphasized in every generation
is being real.
- It is being real to others and to one’s own feelings and
thoughts.
- It is congruence of one’s own experience and awareness as
well as truthfulness in behavior and communication.
- It has been shown to increase well-being and self-esteem.
- Being authentic has become a focal point in which
psychologists try to emphasize as a basic strength among
humans.
George Herbet Mead (1934)
- The Social Life
- Wrote Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social
Behaviorist
- Introduced symbolic interaction which is the idea that
verbal communication contains symbols/meanings.
- Looking glass self (self-concept) grows out from relationships
to others through the process of role taking.
- Role taking is imagining oneself in the place of the other.
- One learned to see themself as if through the eyes of others:
Significant/Particular Others. A person who influences one with
emotional bond: Parents.
Generalized Others. Expected responses of a corrected and
personified community.
Three Stage of Social Development
● Preparatory Stage (Birth to Age 3). Interactions lack meaning
- Children largely imitate people
- Preparing for role taking
● Play Stage (Age 3 to 5). Learn to use language and other
symbols.
- Pretend to take on and roles and focused on role
playing
- Become skillful users of symbolic interaction
● Game Stage (Begins at Age 5). Understand your own social
position and others positions.
- Learn to take on multiple roles
*Mead conceptualized the idea of “I” and “Me” as distinct parts of
the social self.
- I is egocentric, impulsive, and subjective; contains one’s
motive and wants.
- Me is objective and born within the social context; making
the wants of the I.
- Similar to Freud's Notion of the ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
* Self-esteem can be seen as inherent in the ‘I’ and learned by
the ‘Me’.
Charles Horton Cooley
- Author of Human Nature and the Social Order
 - Introduced the concept of the looking glass self that
influenced Mead.
Three Parts of Looking Glass Self:
- What we imagine of how others see us
- How we think others judge us
- What we feel about those judgements
* These perceptions develop feelings such as pride or shame. It
influences others to change their self-concept to fit other’s
opinions.
* Looking at glass self can be a distorted view of ourselves.
* Self-image is shaped by society
Johari Window. Defines four areas of the self:
- Known to self and others (Open or Known)
- Known to others but not to self (Blind)
- Known to self but not to others (Private)
- Known to neither self no others (Unknown)
Anthropology. The study of the human race, its culture and
society, and its physical development.
The self refers to a set of implicit cultural values that we try to
adhere to and use them to guide our lives.
- Archeology. The study of how people lived in the past.
- Physical Anthropology. The study of human biology
(human evolution) and non-human primates.
- Linguistic Anthropology. The study how people speak
and how their language developed and evolved.
- Cultural Anthropology. The study of how people live
their lives in the present and how they may have lived in
the past. It is related to sociology and social psychology.
The Self and Person in Contemporary Anthropology
- The very foundation of the self in light of its cultural
context.
- The self is one interpretation of being human among
others.
- Self development is influenced by family’s history.
The Self as Embedded in Culture
- Edward B. Taylor. Culture is that complex which
includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired as a
member of society.
Components of Culture
- Material Culture. Consists of human technology of all
the things that people make and use.
- Non-material Culture. Inclusive of the intangible
human creations that include beliefs, values, norms, and
symbols. It could also manifest in the material culture of
people.
Conservatism. Social value that can manifest in what people wear.
Catherine Raeff (2010) (A developmental psychologist)
- Culture can influence how you, your peers, and families
view:
- Relationships. Culture is an influential factor
in how you enter and maintain a relationship.
- Personality Traits. Whether you value and
how you value traits like: humility, politeness,
assertiveness, sympathy and self esteem. May
also influence how you perceive hardships.
- Achievement. Influences how you define
success.
- Expressing Emotions. Influence how feelings
are expressed.
E.B. Taylor. Culture is that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
- Include all socially standardized ways of seeing, thinking
about the world, establishing preferences and goals.
- One must learn to behave.
Leslie A. White. Culture is an organization of phenomena which
include acts, objects, ideas, and sentiments.
- It means the entire way of life.
Anthropologists. Culture is based on the premise that all learned
behavior is a product of how people think about things. Known as
cognitions.
Cognitive Models of Culture of Schema
- Views culture as a mental map
- Guides people in their relation to their surroundings
T.S. Eliot. Culture as the ways of life of a particular people living in
one place.
- Includes man’s material inventions and
accomplishments.
- Artifacts. Material aspects of culture. Tell about the
things people value and the processes with which
solutions are formulated to cope with biological and
cultural needs.
Individualist. Grows up to look after himself and immediate family
only.
- Focus on “I”
- Individual ownership of resources
- People are autonomous
Collectivist/Interdependent. Born into extended families or in
other groups that continue protecting them in exchange for
loyalty.
- Focus on “We”
- Resources should be shared
- An integral part of the communal group
Teachings of Confucianism (Fabric of Social Relationship)
- The self as reflected in the collectivist teachings of
confucius.
The Self as a Social Construct
- Integrates man as a member and a product of society
- Self is embedded in the culture
Psychological Perspective
Questioning who we are or engaging in self-reflection to figure out
and understand why we behave in a certain way is normal and is
actually beneficial in increasing self-awareness.
Introspection. Both an informal and a formal experimental
approach, but either process can be undertaken by anyone with
curiosity and determination.
- Originally developed by Wilhelm Wundt in the 1800s.
- Focused on three areas of mental functioning: thoughts,
images, and feelings.
- He led to the current work on perceptual processes and
the establishment of the field of cognitive psychology.
Informal Reflection Process. Examining our own internal
thoughts and feelings and reflecting on what they mean.
- Can be focused on one’s current ongoing mental
experience or very recent past mental experiences.
The Psychology of the Self
- Focuses on the representation of an individual based on
his/her experiences.
- Experiences may come from: home, school, organizations.
- Self is one of the most heavily researched areas in social and
personality psychology.
Self/Self-Concept
- Organized, consistent set of perceptions of and beliefs about
oneself.
- These perceptions and believes that comprise our
self-concept are called self schemas
Self-Schemas
- Formed by numerous factors that we may be aware or
unaware of, which are:
- Past experiences
- Personality traits
- Abilities
- Physical features
- Values
- Goals
- Social
- Roles
- Own observations
- Feedback from the others
The Self as a Cognitive Construct
- Cognitive Construction. A cognitive approach that
focuses on the mental processes rather than the
observable behavior.
William James. Introduced classic distinction between the self as
knower (pure ego) and the self as the known (empirical self)
provides a useful scheme within which to view the multitudinous
aspects of self-functioning.
- Among the first to coin the term Self-Esteem.
- Referred I as pure ego and suggested that this component of
the self is consciousness in itself.
- Referred Me as one of the many things that the I may be
conscious of, and it consists of three components:
Physical/Material Self. consists of the things that belong to us or
that make us belong to (Familya, Clothes, Body).
Social Self. Who we are in a given social situation.
Spiritual Self. Who we are at our core (more concrete or
permanent as well as subjective and most intimate self).
Global Versus DIfferentiated Models
Global Self-Esteem
- Also known as Trait Self-Esteem
- A personality variable that represents the way people
generally feel about themselves.
- A decision people make about their worth as a person
State Self-Esteem
- Also known as Feelings of Self-Worth
- Refers to temporary feelings or momentary emotional
reactions to positive and negative events where we feel good
or bad about ourselves during situations or experiences
Domain Specific Self-Esteem
- Also known as self-evaluation
- Focused on how people evaluate their various abilities and
attributes
- Making distinctions or differentiation on how good or bad
people are in specific physical attributes, abilities and
personal characteristics.
Real and Ideal Self-Concepts
- Contemporary psychology and the understanding of the
internal processes of man
- A group of psychologists called for renewed attention to
inner experience, internal processes and self-constructs.
- These perspectives asset the overall dignity and worth of
human beings and their capacity for self-realization.
Karen Horney
- Feminine psychology
- Established that a person has a/an: Ideal Self, Actual Self,
and Real Self
- Believed that everyone experiences the basic anxiety
through which we experience conflict and strive to cope
and employ tension reduction approaches.
- Believed people develop a number of strategies to cope
with basic anxiety because people feel inferior
Idealized Self-Image. An imaginary picture of the self as the
possessor of unlimited powers and superlative qualities is
developed.
Actual Self. The person in every life, often despised because it fails
to fulfill the requirement of the idealized image.
* Underlying both the idealized and actual self is the
Real Self. revealed only as a person begins to shed the various
techniques developed to deal with basic anxiety and find ways of
resolving conflicts.
- Not an entity but a force that impels growth and
realization.
Carl Rogers (Client-Centered Therapy)
- 1902-1987
- Rather than patient
- A humanistic American psychologist who focused on
the therapeutic relationship and developed a new
method of client-centered therapy.
- One of the first to use the term client
- Real self includes aspects of one’s being and
experiences that are perceived in awareness by the
individual.
Ideal Self. revolves around goals and ambitions in life (dynamic).
- Idealized image that we have developed over time.
Rogers asserted that we have 2 selves:
Ideal Self: person we want to be, idealized version of yourself, how
I should be.
- It is essential in guiding and motivating us to behave in a way
that would lead us to the best version of who we want to be.
Real Self: who we actually are, how I see me, also called “actual
self”
Possible Selves. Developed from past experiences, current
behavior, and future expectations.
- One’s conceptions about the kind of person one might
become in the near future.
- Sometimes it is negative and represents what you fear
you might become.
Real and Ideal Selves
In achieving the ideal self or any goal, numerous studies
emphasize the importance of visual imagining exercises.
How aligned are your ideal and real selves?
Congruence. Self-concept meshes well with actual experience
(some incongruence is probably unavoidable).
Incongruence. Self-concept does not mesh well with actual
experience.
- It may happen from time to time, most especially in
cases or contexts that are new and extreme.
 According to Rogers, the congruence (health personality) or
incongruence (unhealthy personality) between the ideal and real
self has effects on our self-esteem.
“It has been documented that there is a relationship between
low self-esteem and violence, school dropout rates, teenage
pregnancy, suicide, and low academic achievement.." (Misetich &
Delis-Abrams, 2003, para. 5).
Self-Esteem. Refers to one’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a
person (one’s self-worth).
Self-Efficacy. How one performs
- Directly correlated with self-esteem.
To increase self-esteem and self-efficacy, we have to learn to give
unconditional positive regard to each other.
Rogers presented the idea of a fully functioning person:
- “this means that the person is in touch with the here
and now, his or her subjective experiences and feelings,
continually growing and changing” (McLeod, 2014, para.
9).
Key Characteristics of a Fully-Functioning Person:
- Openness to experience
- Flexible self-concept
- Unconditional [positive] regard for the self
- Ability to live in harmony with others
Self As Proactive and Agentic Self (Gordon Allport)
Agent Self. known as the executive function that allows for
actions.
- This is how we make choices and utilize our control in
situations and actively responding.
- It resides over everything that involves decision making,
self-control, taking charge in situations and actively
responding.
Human Agency. An active process of exploring, manipulating and
influencing the environment in order to attain desired outcomes.
Albert Bandura. The core features of human agency are:
- Intentionality - acts a person performs intentionally
- Forethought - setting goals, anticipation of outcomes of
actions, selection of behaviors to produces desired outcomes
and avoiding undesirable ones
- Self-Reactiveness - monitoring progress toward fulfilling
choices.
- Self-Reflectiveness - examination of own functioning,
evaluation of the effect of other people’s action on them.
All of which lead to self-efficacy, the belief that they are capable of
performing actions that will produce a desired result.

“If there’s one "program" we could all start that would do wonders Self-Efficacy. Lies in the center of Bandura’s Social Cognitive
for our self-esteem, it’s abolishing needless self-criticism and Theory.
punitive self-talk—and that program is free!” (Winch, 2014, para. 13) - Measure of one’s ability to complete goals.

Self-Awareness. The ability to improve ourselves.
Kenneth Gergen (Multiple vs Unified Selves)
- Post-modern society contends that man has an identity
that shifts and morphs in different social situations and
in response to different stimuli.
- He argues that having a flexible sense of self in different
contexts is more socially adaptable than forcing oneself
to stick to one self-concept
Multiple Selves. Capacities we carry within us from multiple
relationships.
- Not discovered but rather created in our relationships
with other people.
With high self-efficacy often are eager to accept challenges
because they believe they can overcome them
With low self-efficacy may avoid challenges, or believe experiences
are more challenging than they actually are
“When you invest your time in developing yourself personally and
professionally, you are role-playing as a catalyst for self-growth.
There are myriad skill investment avenues. For instance — read the
news and books, expose your brain to creative ideas, meet [good]
people” (Nathan, 2018, para. 5).

Unified Selves. Well-being comes when our personality dynamics

are congruent, cohesive and consistent. It is understood that a
person is essentially connected with selfhood and identity.

True vs False Selves

Donald Winnicot
- Distinguished the ‘true self’ from the ‘false self’ in the human
personality, considering the TRUE SELF as based on a sense
of being in the experiencing body.

False Self. a necessary defensive organization, a survival kit, a

caretaker of the true self, the means by which a threatened person
has managed to survive.
- Used when the person has to comply with external rules.
- Constantly seeks to anticipate demands of others in order to
maintain the relationship.
- Healthy False Self is functional, can be compliant but without
the feeling that it has betrayed its true self.
- Unhealthy False Self fits in but through a feeling of forced
compliance rather than loving adaptation.

True Self. a sense of integrity, connected wholeness.

Heinz Kohut. Can lead towards ‘narcissistic personality; which
identifies with external factors at the cost of one’s own
autonomous creativity.