PART 1: Self from various perspectives

LESSON 3:

Psychological Perspectives
(The Self as a Cognitive Construct)

Intended Learning Outcomes

After studying this lesson, you should be able to:

•enumerate the various psychological perspectives and

concepts of the "self";

• analyze the effects of the various psychological factors in the

formation of the "self"; and

• examine one's “self” against the different perspectives in this

lesson and the various experiences of your classmates.

(The Self as a Cognitive Construct)

OVERVIEW:
• Theories generally see the self and identity as
mental constructs, created and recreated in
memory.
• The way information is taken in and how it is
analyzed and processed is a function of human
cognition.
• people construct their own understanding and
knowledge of the world through their experiences
and their reflections upon these experiences.
• People are overtly and covertly active individuals,
constantly moving and constantly processing
information coming from the environment.

(The Self as a Cognitive Construct)

• The study of how individuals think

and arrive at choices and
decisions is relevant across several
points of human development.

“I AM WHO I AM.”

“IF YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE, THEN WHO ARE YOU
THAT MAKES YOU WHO YOU ARE?”

The SELF is the “sense of personal identity

and of who we are as individuals.”
(Jhangiani and Tarry, 2014)

The Self as a Cognitive Construct:

• William James

• Sigmund Freud

• Carl Jung

• Donald Winnicott

• Albert Bandura

• Carl Rogers

Who Am I?

William James’
Me Self and I Self

William James’
Concept of Self

1890
Father of American Psychology

Aspects of the Self:

“Me-Self”
• The empirical self;
• the self as an object of experience
• the totality of all content of consciousness that is experienced as self-
related
• It can be illustrated with sensory experiences; collection of types of
experiences, which includes: visual; auditory; tactile; olfactory;
experiences of hot and cold; pain; taste; other bodily experiences
• Refers to describing the person’s personal experiences: Material Self, Social
Self, and Spiritual Self.

Aspects of the Self:

“I-Self”
• concerns with metaphysics (transcendental) – the existence of the self
• reflects the soul of a person or what is thought of as the mind
• the self as a subject of experience
• it is the thinking, acting, and the feeling self
• refers to the self that knows who she or he is
• “I” experience my thoughts as not mine. My thoughts feel as “not-mine,”
however, it’s still me (or: “I”) who thinks of them as “not-mine.”

References
Ashcraft, D. ( ). Personality Theories Workbook. 4th Ed.
Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2009). Theories of Personality, 7th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin10.htm
http://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_02.pdf
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=neurotransmitters+and+effect+on+the+body
&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=613&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiux
LyX6a_RAhWCGZQKHZH6BjEQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=erikson%27s+eight+st
ages+of+development&imgrc=-reEdEOmJ9gbvM%3A
Winnicot. True Self and False Self

Miriam College. Understanding the Self Training. January 4-20, 2017

The Self as a Cognitive Construct

Sigmund Freud saw the self, its

mental processes, and one's
behavior as the results of the
interaction between:
Sigmund Freud • the id,
(1856-1939)
• was an Austrian neurologist and
• the ego, and
the founder of psychoanalysis. • the superego.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

• Sigmund Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind,

• Primary assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind

governs behavior to a greater degree than people suspect.

• The goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious.

THREE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

preconscious

Unexpressed emotions will

never die. They are buried alive
and will come forth later in
uglier ways.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sigmund Freud

The LEVELS of CONSCIOUSNESS and the Three (3) Personality Structures

THREE STRUCTURE OF THE MIND /

PERSONALITY STRUCTURES

• Freud believed that the id, ego,

and superego are in constant
conflict and that adult
personality and behavior are
rooted in the results of these
internal struggles throughout
childhood.
• He believed that a person who
has a strong ego has a healthy
personality and that imbalances
in this system can lead to
neurosis (what we now think of
as anxiety and depression) and
unhealthy behaviors.

Freud’s Structure of Personality

Freud saw the self,

its mental processes,
and one’s behavior
as the result
between the Id, the
Ego, and the
Superego.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

• Freud believed that the nature of the
conflicts among the id, ego, and
superego change over time as a person
grows from child to adult.
• Specifically, he maintained that these
conflicts progress through a series of
five basic stages, each with a different
focus: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and
genital.
• He called his idea the psychosexual
theory of development, with each
psychosexual stage directly related to a
different physical center of pleasure.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

• Across these five stages,

the child is presented with
different conflicts between
their biological drives (id)
and their social and moral
conscience (superego)
because their biological
pleasure-seeking urges
focus on different areas of
the body (what Freud
called “erogenous zones”).

• The child’s ability to resolve these

internal conflicts determines
their future ability to cope and
function as an adult.

• Failure to resolve a stage can

lead one to become fixated in
that stage, leading to unhealthy
personality traits; successful
resolution of the stages leads to
a healthy adult.

INSIGHTS

• The crux of this theory rests on Jung's

concepts of archetypes and the existence of
deep psychic space or collective unconscious.

• This means that an individual's life history is of

Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) great importance for understanding their
• Swiss psychologist and current circumstances.
psychiatrist who founded
analytic psychology, in some
aspect a response to Sigmund
Freud's psychoanalysis.

• The Self signifies the coherent whole,

unifying both the conscious and
unconscious mind of a person.
• The Self, is the most important and
difficult archetype to understand.

ARCHETYPES are universal symbols or patterns that are present in the

collective unconscious of all humans. They are innate and inherited, and
they shape our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

CONCEPTS TO REMEMBER:

What is self according to Carl Jung?

• The self signifies the unification of

consciousness and unconsciousness in a
person and representing the psyche as a
whole.
• It is realized as the product of
individuation, which in his view is
the process of integrating various
aspects of one's personality. r

INSIGHTS

True Self VS False Self:

Defense Mechanisms
False self defends the True Self

Donald Woods Winnicott

(1896-1971)
• an English pediatrician and psychoanalyst who
was especially influential in the field of object
relations theory and developmental psychology.

Winnicott contends that everyone is divided into these two selves.

• People develop a false self to protect their inner, more vulnerable

true self.

❑ The true self refers to a sense of self based on authentic

experience and the feeling of being truly present and alive.

❑ The false self is a defensive façade, behind which the

person can feel empty, its behaviors being learned and
controlled rather than spontaneous and genuine.

➢ For Winnicott, the mother is the infant’s universe, and the

mother-baby relationship forms the basis of the child’s
subsequent development.
➢ The ideal parenting model for Winnicott is the
‘good enough mother’:
❑ one who provides a ‘facilitating environment’, in
which the child’s inner potential to develop a ‘true
self’ can unfold.
❑ The ‘good enough mother’ doesn’t need to be
perfect, but she doesn’t neglect the baby, nor does
she overprotect him.
❖ Winnicott’s term for an excessively attached
caregiver is the ‘ordinary devoted mother’, who
hampers the infant’s emerging capacity to
embody a secure ‘true’ self by not adequately
responding to its spontaneous needs.
❑ The ‘good enough mother’ is both there for the
infant whenever needed, and capable of separating
herself sufficiently so the infant can develop into
his or her own self.

• Healthy development requires us to

fully experience this time when we
have no concern for the feelings and
opinions of those looking after us.

• However, if as babies we are denied

this opportunity to be ourselves, we
learn to modify our impulses in a bid
to receive the love we crave and start
constructing a false self.

• This manifests in various

dysfunctional behaviors in
adults:

❑ from feeling unanchored and

lacking in spontaneity to suffering
extreme psychological disorders
such as schizophrenia.

• The stress of the external world is indirectly

brought to the child.

• As a strategy for dealing with this

anxiety, the child tries to win back the
mother’s attention and love by falling
into line with her needs, and thus
suppressing his or her own desires.

• The infant begins to create a false self, where

‘other people’s expectations can become of
overriding importance, overlaying or
contradicting the original sense of self, the
one connected to the very roots of one’s
being’.
• This false self is inauthentic because its
spontaneous desires are hidden away. He or
she has learnt to comply far too early and
become obedient at the expense of his or her
ability to feel authentically.

❑ When the interaction between mother and baby

fails, the ‘experiences of existential continuity’
occur.

➢ This means there has been a radical

interruption of the baby’s spontaneous
development.

➢ This is what gives rise to the false self: the

baby learns to show only what her/ his
mother wants to see; she/he becomes
something that she/he isn’t.

Degrees of Falseness:

• Different degrees of responsive mothering determine

true and false self-development:

❑ levels of ‘falseness’
➢healthy
➢unhealthy.

HEALTHY FALSE SELF UNHEALTHY FALSE SELF

• A healthy false self enables us to be polite and
• Disconnected from their true self. They tend to
comply with rules and regulations, even when
we don’t want to.
• Winnicott asserts that a healthy false self is
necessary and desirable for us to exist in the
world.
• A healthy false self allows us to live our
lives but protects the true self.
A major component of the healthy false self
is an awareness of personal
boundaries.
A healthy false self is one that works with
and stays committed to the true self.
It is a form of useful self-protection - in that
it shields us at times when vulnerability
would not be appropriate or might even be
harmful.
intellectualize reality and are largely devoid of
authentic emotions and creativity.
• They struggle to feel valued, as they feel, it is their false
self who has achieved any successes they may have had.
• This creates a breakdown with themselves and with
the world.
• For Winnicott, a false sense of self underpins all serious
dysfunctional behaviors, including narcissism,
addiction and schizophrenia – where the person is
separated from himself to the point that his real self
virtually disappears.
• In these cases, the person uses all the resources
available to them to build and maintain their false self
so that they can face a world that is perceived as
unpredictable or unreliable.

INTERVENTION
When a false self has come to be dominant, well-being
is only achievable through a reclaiming of the true self.

PSYCHOTHERAPY is a great way to regain confidence in

our honest expressions. It can help us untangle our false
self from our true self by regressing to that time before
we learnt to be false.

Therapy is a space in which you can go back to basics, and

explore your true feelings and desires openly while being
listened to and understood by a therapist who wants to help
you feel free to be who you truly are.

With help, “just be yourself” might not feel like such muddy
advice—you might just have a better understanding of who you
are and what you want and have more faith in the world’s
ability to accept you.

INSIGHTS

The Self as Proactive and Agentic

Albert Bandura
(December 1925-July 2021)
• Canadian-born American psychologist

• originator of social cognitive theory / Observational Learning

• best known for his modeling study on aggression, referred to as the “Bobo doll”
experiment, which demonstrated that children can learn behaviors through the
observation of adults.

The Self as Proactive and Agentic

Agency refers to the human capability to influence one's functioning and

the course of events by one's actions.

• According to Albert Bandura, humans have the ability to act. They are able to
produce experiences on their own.

• The main agents that drive these experiences are the following:

1. Intentionality
2. Forethought
3. Self-reactiveness
4. Self-reflectiveness

1. Intentionality

➢ deals with the forming of intentions

that “include action plans and strategies
for realizing them”

➢ Enables us to behave with a purpose.

2. Forethought

➢ Includes more than future-directed

plans. People set goals for themselves
and foresee likely outcomes of
prospective actions to guide and
motivate their efforts anticipatorily.
➢ When projected over a long-term
course on matters of value, a
forethoughtful perspective provides
direction, coherence, and meaning to
one’s life.

3. Self-reactiveness

• The translation of plans into successful

courses of action requires:

• the self-management of thought

processes; and

• motivation to stick with chosen courses in

the face of difficulties, setbacks, and
uncertainties.

3. Self-reactiveness

• Self-reactiveness broadens the role of the agent to

be more than just “planners and fore-thinkers”
and includes processes of self-management and
self-motivation, as well as emotional states that
can undermine self-regulation:

4. Self-reflectiveness

• In everything that we do, we must remember to reflect to

our experiences;

• These experiences that we have collected:

• will guide, and make us better person;
and equipped with new knowledge, views, and opinions
that would make us group not just as an individual but as a
human being that is capable of change and new things.

INSIGHTS

Person-Centered Theory

CARL ROGERS
(1902-1987)

• American psychologist and among the

founders of the humanistic approach in
psychology.

Real and Ideal Self-Concepts

Rogers’ Person-Centered Theory

(1) There is a tendency for all matter, both organic
and inorganic, to evolve from simpler to more
complex forms called formative tendency

(2) There is a tendency within all humans and

other organisms to move toward completion or
fulfillment of potentials (i.e., wholeness)
called the actualizing tendency

(3) Actualizing tendency is the only motive people

possess.

• Self-concept is an individual's
knowledge of who he or she is.

• "the organized, consistent set of

perceptions and beliefs about
oneself.“
• is active, dynamic, and malleable. It
can be influenced by social
situations and even one's own
motivation for seeking self-
knowledge.
• The self is the humanistic term
for who we really are as a
person.

Real and Ideal Self-Concepts

Self-Concept

CONGRUENT INCONGRUENT
REAL IDEAL REAL IDEAL
SELF SELF SELF SELF

• There is considerable overlap between • There is little overlap between real self &
real self & ideal self ideal self
• Mismatch = anxiety
• Close match = harmony
• Person will become defensive and use
distortion and denial to reduce
incongruence

Real and Ideal Self-Concepts

Self-Concept

CONGRUENT INCONGRUENT
REAL IDEAL REAL IDEAL
SELF SELF SELF SELF

• There is considerable overlap between • There is little overlap between real self &
real self & ideal self ideal self
• Mismatch = anxiety
• Close match = harmony
• Person will become defensive and use
Miriam College. Understanding the Self Training. January 4-20, 2017 distortion and denial to reduce
incongruence

Self-Concept Real and Ideal Self-Concepts

CONGRUENT INCONGRUENT
IDEAL SELF REAL IDEAL
REAL SELF
High Grades/Scores SELF SELF
DILIGENT
Pass/High
lazy grades

• There is considerable overlap between • There is little overlap between real self &
real self & ideal self ideal self
• Mismatch = anxiety
• Close match = harmony
• Person will become defensive and use
Miriam College. Understanding the Self Training. January 4-20, 2017 distortion and denial/ LYING/ Harassing
the teacher to reduce incongruence
Real and Ideal Self-Concepts

Rogers: Requirements for Actualization

Miriam College. Understanding the Self Training. January 4-20, 2017

Case Analysis:
• Society
• Family
• Authenticity
• Actualization –
Reaching one’s
potentials

Insights

Intended Learning Outcomes

After studying this lesson, you should be able to:

•enumerate the various psychological perspectives and

concepts of the "self";

• analyze the effects of the various psychological factors in the

formation of the "self"; and

• examine one's “self” against the different perspectives in this

lesson and the various experiences of your classmates.

References
Ashcraft, D. ( ). Personality Theories Workbook. 4th Ed.
Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2009). Theories of Personality, 7th Ed. New York: McGraw Hill.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin10.htm
http://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_02.pdf
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=neurotransmitters+and+effect+on+the+body
&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=613&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiux
LyX6a_RAhWCGZQKHZH6BjEQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=erikson%27s+eight+st
ages+of+development&imgrc=-reEdEOmJ9gbvM%3A
Winnicot. True Self and False Self
Miriam College. Understanding the Self Training. January 4-20, 2017