MATERIAL SELF

• We are living in a world of sale and shopping spree.

• Product advertisements are suggestive of making us
feel better or look good. Part of us wants to have that
product.
• What makes us want to have those products are
connected with who we are.
• What we want to have and already possess is related to
our self.
“We regard our possessions as parts of our
selves. We are what we have and what we
possess.”
-Belk (1988)
• There is a direct link between self-identity
with what we have and possess.
• Our wanting to have and possess has a
connection with another aspect of the self –
the material self.
Abstraction
• A Harvard psychologist in the late nineteenth
century, William James, wrote in his book, The
Principles of Psychology in 1980 that
understanding the self can be examined
through its different components.
• He described these components as:
1. Its constituents
2. The feelings and emotions they arouse – self-feelings
3. The actions to which they prompt – self-seeking and self-
preservation
• The constituents of self are composed of the material
self, the social self, the spiritual self and the pure ego.
• The material self, according to James primarily is
about our bodies, clothes, immediate family, and
home. We are deeply affected by these things
because we have put much investment of our self
to them.
• Body
• Clothes
• Immediate family Body

• Home
BODY
• Innermost part of our material self is our body.
• We are investing in our body. We are directly attached to this
commodity that we cannot live without.
• We strive hard to make sure that this body functions well and good.
Any ailments directly affects us.
• We do have certain preferential attachment or intimate closeness
to certain body parts because of its value to us
• There were people who get their certain body parts insured.
CLOTHES
• Microcosmus, stipulates that “any time we bring an object into the surface of
our body, we invest that object into the consciousness of our personal
existence taking in its contours to our own and making it part of the self”
• The fabric and style of the clothes we wear bring sensations to the body to
which directly affect our attitudes and behavior.
• Thus, clothes are placed in the second hierarchy of material self.
• Clothing is a form of self-expression.
• We choose and wear clothes that reflect our self (Watson, 2014)
IMMEDIATE FAMILY
• Our parents and siblings hold another great important part of our self. What
they do or become affects us.
• When their lives are in success, we feel their victories as if we are the one
holding the trophy.
• In their failures, we are put to shame or guilt
• When they are in disadvantage situation, there is an urgent urge to help like a
voluntary instinct of saving one’s self from danger.
• We place huge investment in our immediate family when we see them as the
nearest replica of our self.
HOME
• Home is where our heart is.
• It is the earliest nest of our selfhood. Our experiences inside the
home were recorded and marked on particular parts and things
in our home.
• The home is an extension of self, because in it, we can directly
connect to our self.
• Having investment of self to things results to our
attachment to those things. The more investment of
self-given to the particular thing, the more we identify
ourselves to it.
• We also tend to collect and possess properties. The
collections in different degree of investment of self,
becomes part of the self.
• James (1980) described self: “a man’s self is the sum
total of all what he CAN call his.”
• Possessions then become a part or an extension of the
self.
• Material possession gains higher value in out lifetime if
we use material possession to find happiness, associate
these things with significant events, accomplishments,
and people in our lives. There are even times, when
material possession of a person that is closely
identified to the person, gains acknowledgement with
high regard even if the person already passed away.
• The possessions that we have tell something about
who we are, our self-concept, our past, and even our
future.