WEEK 4: THE SELF ACCORDING 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
selfconcept): 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 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.

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. 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.

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.
• 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 (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.