UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

UNDERSTANDING SELF-IDENTITY
- Lifelong process; there is something to improve.

ELEMENTS OF SELF-CONSTRUCT:

 Self-Esteem – refers to the general feelings of

the self-worth or self-value.

SIGNS NA MABABA:

1. Lack of Self-trust
2. Constantly comparing yourself to others
3. Engage in people-pleasing behavior
4. Feel a little control over your life
5. You don’t reinforce boundaries. - Created by 2 American psychologist, Joseph Luff
and Harry Ingham in 1955.
 Self-Efficacy – is a belief in one’s capacity to - Help people learn about themselves through
succeed at tasks. feedback and to build trust.
 General Self-Efficacy – general capacity - Use to improve self-awareness
to handle tasks.
 Specific Self-Efficacy – beliefs about 1st Quadrant (Open Free from conflict and
one’s ability to perform specific tasks. Area) misunderstandings;
foster communication
 Self-Confidence – combination of self-esteem
and cooperation.
and self-efficacy; refers to one’s personal worth.
2nd Quadrant (Blind Reduce the blind spot
SELF-CONCEPT Spot) and expand it into an
- belief about oneself/yourself open area
- Self-Image 3rd Quadrant (Hidden Person is aware of but
Area) has chosen not to share
- Ideal Self
with others; personal
- Self-Esteem (high & low)
secrets and insecurities,
 Inferiority Complex (anxiety and trauma
isolation) 4th Quadrant (Unknown) What’s unknown about
 Superiority Complex (tatapakan ang the person can come in
ibang tao) various forms, such as
capabilities, aptitudes
Can be coiled thru:
and behaviors; decreased
- Feedback from others (constructive and in size through self-
destructive criticism) observation/observations
- Experiences of others; can be
- Self-reflection facilitated by personal
counseling or through
group activities
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES
 Identity Crisis (Erik Eriksson) – it is normal,
predictable part of healthy development.
SOCRATES
 “To find yourself, think for yourself”
 “Know thyself”
 “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
 “We cannot live better than in seeking to be
better”
 A classical Greek Athenian Philosopher & born
circa 470 B.C. in Athens, Greece.
 Known his life through the writings of his
students, Plato & Xenophon.
 As he grew older, he began to explore
Philosophy.
 “Father of Western Philosophy”
 No man was wiser than Socrates according to
Delphi.
 Goal of Philosophy: “Know Thyself”
Why? Because only by knowing yourself can
improve your life.
SOCRATIC METHOD
 Logical process of using questions and answers
to explore a subject.
 Unique way of teaching and exploring
understanding the self.
HUMAN NATURE
 believes that man is compose of body & soul.
 True self is not to be identified with what we
own, with our social status, our reputation, or
even with our body. Instead, he famously
emphasize that our true self is our soul.
SOUL
 believes that it is the person’s core identity.
 It is the inner being, that determines the quality
of our life.
 The soul is the source of one’s deepest thoughts
& highest desires.
 SOUL IS IMMORTAL
THE HUMAN MIND
 Man is rational being. A rational man can
distinguish between virtues to vices & from
knowledge to ignorance.
 man is uniquely defined through his ability
to think & question his own identity.
 “WHO AM I?”
“THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING”
 convinced that every person has a moral
obligation to do to achieve the full human
potential.
 You need to activate & exercise your “soul’s
power” which is in the Greek definition is
“eudemonia” or “happiness”.
“GOAL OF LIFE”
 goal of life is to be HAPPY.
 According to him, “a virtuous man is a happy
man”. Virtues alone is the one & only supreme
good that will secure our happiness.
 Virtue is defined as moral excellence, and an
individual is considered virtuous if their
character is made up of the moral qualities that
are accepted as virtues.
 (Knowledge = Virtue = Happiness)
PLATO
 “Good actions give strength to ourselves and
inspire good actions in others”
 a Greek philosopher.
 In 407 B.C. he became a pupil and friend of
Socrates.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
 Plato founded (387 B.C) near Athens the most
influential school of the ancient world, the
ACADEMY, where he taught until his death. His
most famous pupil there was Aristotle.
HUMAN NATURE
 Plato is a dualist. Also believed that man is
composed of body and soul.
 He believes that the existence of soul is before
birth & after death.
 He also asserted that the soul or mind attains
knowledge of the forms, as opposed to the
ST. AUGUSTINE VIEWS:
senses. Needless to say, we should care about
our soul rather than our body.
THEORY OF FORM
 The physical world in NOT really the “real”
world because the ultimate reality exists beyond
the physical world.
 “soul” is indeed the most divine aspect of the
human being.
TRI-PARTITE SOUL
1. REASON - Our divine essence that enables us to
think, make wise choices & achieve a true
understanding of eternal truth.
2. PHYSICAL APPETITE - Our basic biological needs
such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire.
3. SPIRIT/PASSION - Our basic emotions such as
love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness, &
empathy.
ST. AUGUSTINE
 also known as Augustine of Hippo, he was a
bishop in Northern Africa.
 He was also an ancient theologian who played a
significant development of early Western
philosophy. He was greatly influenced by Plato’s
philosophy.
HUMAN NATURE
 took from Plato the view that the human self is
an immaterial soul that can think.
 Plato held that after death the souls of those
who most love the form would rise to meditate
the eternal truth, a sort of heaven beyond space
& time.
 these forms were ideas in the mind of the
perfect eternal God.
 The goal of every human person is to attain this
relationship and happiness with the GOD by
living his life on the earth in a virtue.
 the ability to choose between good & evil.
 The fundamental duty of a man is to love & to
serve God; if a person succeed on this, he will
also choose good & avoid evil.
1. The most important part of the mind is not
intellect but the will.
2. The most important part of a person is the inner
man – the mind.
3. The orientation of the will determines whether
we love lower goods or higher goods.
4. The human will become corrupted, so that it is
in most cases inclined to love lower rather than
the higher goods.
5. Good persons are those whose will & reason are
subordinated to faith in God & devotion to
God’s will.
RENE DESCARTES
 “I think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum)
 mathematician and “founder of modern
philosophy”
 French Philosopher
 Was a leader in the 17th century scientific
evolution.
IDEOLOGY
 Descartes is also a dualist.
 Claimed that there’s an essential distinction
between the mind and body.
 Concluded that the first thing a person can be
certain is his own existence.
 Proposed the doubt was a principal tool of
disciplined analysis. Method is
Hyperbolical/Metaphysical Doubt or sometime
referred to as Methodological Skepticism.
 Believed that being human starts with self.
Knowledge doesn’t depend on the external
world.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
 Knowledge is a product of a rational mind; body  Suggest the “self” is not a being one can locate
and mind are separate. and analyze but simply the convenient name
 THE SOUL: the cogito, the things that think. that people use to refer to all behaviors that
(The mind) people make.
 THE BODY: the extenza, extension of mind
SIGMUND FREUD
JOHN LOCKE  “Wish fulfillment is the road to the
 “Human mind at birth is a tabula rasa, which unconscious”
means that knowledge is derived from  Psychoanalytic theory and practice originated in
experience” the late 19TH century in the work of Sigmund
 If Descartes describe the “self” as thinking Freud (1856-1939).
thing, Locke expanded this definition of “self” to  offers a distinctive way of thinking
include the memories of that thinking thing. about the human mind and of
 “Self” is identified with consciousness and this responding to psychological distress.
self is consists of sameness of consciousness.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
 Self consists of memory.
 The person existing now is the same person Theory of Instincts
yesterday because he/she remember the
1. EROS
thoughts, experience/actions of the earlier self.
- Life instinct (sexual & survival)
 A person’s memories provide a continuity of
– Constructive
experience that allows him/her to identify
– Self-preservation drive
himself/herself as the person over time.
and sex drive
IDEOLOGY 2. THANATOS
- Death instinct
 Theory of personal identity allows him to justify
(aggressive)
a defense of accountability.
- Destructive
 Same “self” in the passing time, Locke insisted,
a person can be held accountable for behaviors
he/she can remember.
 He believed that punishing someone for
behaviors he/she has no recollection of doing is
equivalent to punishing him/her for actions that
was never performed.
 He asserted that the state of the person who
cannot remember his/her behavior is the same
as the state of the person who never committed
act, which meant the person was ignorant.

GILBERT RYLE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 “I Act, therefore I Am”
 solves the mind-body dichotomy that has been
running for a long period of time in the history
of thought by obviously denying the concept of
an internal, non-physical self.
 What truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.
1. CONSCIOUS LEVEL
- Involves all the things that you
are currently aware of and
thinking about.
2. PRE-CONSCIOUS LEVEL
- Consists of the past psychic experiences
and desires which are readily recallable and
is the storehouse for conscious mind.
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF
3. UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL
- consists of the buried memories, thoughts,
emotions and impulses for which conscious
mind has no direct voluntary access.

ID - Entirely unconsciously

EGO – Entirely conscious

SUPER EGO - Partly conscious, mostly unconscious

 DEFENSE MECHANISM
 A mental movement that one unconsciously
chooses to use to falsify the truth of one’s
experience to protect oneself (ego) from
feeling painful emotions like shame, guilt,
fear, stress and anxiety.
1. PROJECTION
 The person attributes one’s own perceived
negative attributes onto someone else.
2. SUBLIMATION
 Occurs when the ego replaces an
unacceptable impulse with a socially-
approved course of action.
3. REACTION FORMATION
 Occurs when we transform an unacceptable
impulse by giving expression to its opposite.
4. DENIAL
 This is used to help a person cope with
difficult circumstances such as illness or
death in the family.
5. DISPLACEMENT
 This is used by individuals who shift
unacceptable feelings from one object to
another or acceptable objects.
6. REPRESSION
 This is used to help a person force the
unacceptable or threatening feeling out of
awareness to the point where he/she
becomes unaware of it.
7. REGRESSION
 This occurs when we revert to the way we
use to behave when we assume behaviors
which gave great pleasure during the earlier,
less complicated times of our life.