PSY 110: UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

UNIT 1 Lesson 1:

Socrates
 ”know thyself” - gnothi Seauton
 Self knowledge - knowing one’s degree of understanding about the world and
knowing one’s capabilities and potentials.
 Knowledge is virtue and ignorance is vice - a person’s acceptance of ignorance is
a springboard for the acquisition of knowledge later on. (“The only true wisdom
is in knowing you know nothing.”)
 Every man is composed of body and soul. Soul pre-existed the body, and soul is
what makes the body alive.

Plato
 Three components of the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the
appetitive soul.
Rational Soul - reason and intellect
Spirited Soul - emotions
Appetitive Soul - base desires like eating, drinking, sleeping,
and having sex.
 “The Republic” - justice in the human person can only be attained if the three
parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another.
 Enduring self - The soul is eternal and constitutes the enduring self, because
even after death, the soul continues to exist.

St. Augustine
 The Confessions
 Concept of Individual Identity: the idea of the self.
Twofold process: self-presentation, which leads to self-realization.

Rene Descartes
 Father of Modern Philosophy
 The Meditations of First Philosophy
- there is so much that we should doubt.
 “cogito ergo sum” - “I think therefore, I am.”

John Locke
 Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind.
 “Identity and Diversity” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
 “The Prince and the Cobbler”
 tabula rasa - everyone started as a blank state, and the content is provided by
one’s experiences over time.
Davide Hume
 A Scottish Philosopher and Empiricist
 Empiricism - knowledge can only be possible if it is sensed and experienced.
 The self is nothing else but a bundle of impressions.
 If one tries to examine his experiences, he finds that they can all be categorized
into two: impressions and ideas.
 Self, according to Hume, is simply “a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in
a perpetual flux and movement”

Immanuel Kant
 German philosopher, theorized that consciousness is formed by one’s inner and
outer sense.
Inner sense - psychological state and intellect
Outer sense - one’s senses and the physical world

Empirical self-consciousness - inner sense; moods, feelings, and

sensations including pleasure and pain
Apperception - the faculty that allows for application of concepts

Sigmund Freud’s Psycahoanalytic Theory

 “libido” theory - the sex urges in the unconscious constitute the main human
drive

Two Kinds of Biological Instincts

Eros or life instinct - helps the individual survive
Thanatos or death instinct - the destructive forces present in all human
beings.

Freud’s Structure of the Human Mind

id - basic physical needs and urges
- operates by the pleasure principle
- occupies the unconscious level of the mind
superego - Moral Arm of Personality
- concerned with social rules and morals
- represents the ideal, and strives for perfection
ego - the rational pragmatic part of our personality
- obeys the reality principle and block the id’s irrational thinking

Freud’s Three Levels of Mind

The conscious mind - thoughts, sensations, memories, feelings, and
wishes which we are aware at any given moment
 The preconscious mind - thoughts, feelings, sensations, or memories we
are not aware at the moment, but may be brought to consciousness
The unconscious mind - a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and
repressed memories instincts and wishes we are not aware of or that are outside
of our conscious awareness.

Gilbert Ryle
 A British Philospher, opposed Rene Descartes that the self is a “thinking thing.”
 He maintained that the mind is not separate from the body (mind-body
dichotomy).
 The “self” is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the convenient
name that people use to refer to all the behaviors that people make.
 Concept of Mind (1949), he described Descartes mind-body dualism as “ghost
in the machine.”
 “I act, therefore I am.”

Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland

 Neuroscientists
 For them, self is nothing else but brain, or simply the self is contained entirely
within the physical brain.
 Patricia’s book Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (2013)

Merleau-Ponty
 A phenomenologist who asserts that the mind-body bifurcation that has been
going on for a long time is a futile endeavor and an invalid problem.
 Mind and body are intertwined that they cannot be separated.
 Distinguished body into two types: the subjective body, as lived and
experienced, and the objective body, as observed and scientifically investigated.
 He regarded self as embodied subjectivity.
 “I am my body”

UNIT 1 Lesson 2:

The Self as Cognitive Construct

 How people define themselves in relation to others greatly influences how they
think, feel, and behave and is ultimately related to the construct of identity.

William James Theory of Self

“I” Self - reflects what people see or perceive themselves doing in the physical
world.
“Me” Self - a more subjective and psychological phenomenon, referring to
individuals’ reflection about themselves.
 Three Components of the Me Self
Material Self - tangible objects or possessions we collect for ourselves
Subclasses: bodily self and extracorporeal
The Social Self - how we interact and portray ourselves within different
groups, situations, or persons
The Spiritual Self - internal dispositions

Carl Roger’s Self Theory

 He believed that the self does not exist at birth; it is developed gradually during
childhood wherein one differentiates the self from non-self.

Real Self
- is who an individual actually is, intrinsically; the self that feels closest to
how one identifies with.

Ideal Self
- is the perception of what a person would like to be or thinks he or she
would be.

UNIT 1 Lesson 3:

The Self as a Product of Society

 Sociological perspective of the self is based on the assumption that human
behavior is influenced by group life.

George Mead’s Social Self

 The self is not biological but social.
 Self is something that is developed through social interaction.
 Self has two parts: self-awareness and self-image.
 Role playing is the process in which one takes on the role of one another by
putting oneself in the position of the person with whom he or she interacts.

Three Stages of Development

Preparatory Stage (0-3 years old)
- Children imitate people around them
Play Stage (3-5 years old)
- Children start to view themselves in relation to others
Game Stage (early school years; about 8-9 years old)
- Children understand not only on their own social position but
also those of others around them.
“I” and “Me” Self
“I” Self - The “I” is the phase of the self that is unsocialized and spontaneous.
- The “I” is the response of the organism to the attitude of others
 “Me” Self - The “Me” is the self that results from the progressive stages of the
role playing or role-taking and the perspective one assumes to view and analyze one’s
own behaviors.
- The “Me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which one
assumes. It is the socialized aspect of the individual.

The full development of the self is attained when the “I” and “ Me” are united.

Generalized Others
 Mead’s described it as an organized community or social group which gives to
the individual his or her unity of self.

The Socialization Process

 Socialization is different based on race, gender, and class.

Agents of Socialization
 The Family
 The Media
 Peers
 Religion
 Schools