UNDERSTANDING

THE SELF
The self is a person as the object of his or her reflective consciousness.
whereby reflective consciousness is continuous awareness of your thoughts,
emotions, and behaviours. There are four areas to be considered in the
process of Understanding self, that is, self-concept, self-esteem, social self,
and self-knowledge.
 THE PHILOSOPHER
• Socrate-the goal is realization of acquisition of wisdom through “ Knowing one’s Self’’.He was fully convienced that
philosophy must obtain practical results for the greater wellbeing of society.
• Plato-at least in many of his dialogues, held that the true self of human beings is the reason or the intellect that constitutes their
soul and that is separable from their body.
• Aristotle's philosophy of self was constructed in terms of hylomorphism in which the soul of a human being is the form or the
structure of the human body or the human matter.
• St. Augustine in his Confessions takes this idea and expands it into an entire genre that critically inquireswhat it means to be a
person. This identity is achieved through a two-fold process: self-presentation, whichleads to self-realization.
• Descartes thought that the self is a thinking thing distinct from the body. His first famous principle was”Cogito, ergo sum",
which means “I think, therefore I am." Although the mind and body are physically togetheras a whole, the mind and body are
mentally independent and serve their own function.
 Charles Cooley
• describes how one’s self or social identity is dependent on one’s
appearance to others. This initial theory was based on Cooley’s
observations of childhood social development.
 Cooley wrote that people’s ideas of
themselves have “three principal elements:
• (1) the imagination of our appearance to the other person;
• (2) the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and
• (3) some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification
 Three activities develop the self:
• Language develops self by allowing individuals to respond to each other through
symbols, gestures, words and sounds. Language conveys others' attitudes and
opinions toward a subject or the person.
• Play develops self by allowing individuals to take on different roles, pretend, and
express expectation ofothers. Play develops one's self-consciousness through role-
playing.
• Games develop self by allowing individuals to understand and adhere to the rules
of the activity. Self isdeveloped by understanding that there are rules in which one
must abide by in order to win the game or besuccessful at an activity.
 ANTROPOLOGY
• Anthropologists have most frequently employed the term 'identity' (self) to
refer to this idea of selfhood in aloosely Eriksonian way (Erikson 1972)
properties based on the uniqueness and individuality which makes aperson
distinct from others. Identity (self) refers to qualities of sameness in relation
to a person's connection toothers and to a particular group of people.
• Anthropology is the scientific study of the origins of humans, how we have
changed over the years,and how we relate to each other, both within our own
culture and with people from other cultures.
 The Self embedded in Culture
• Theorists of culture and personality school argued that socialization
creates personality patterns. Itshapes a person’s emotions, thoughts,
behaviors, cultural values and norms to fit into and function asproductive
members in the surrounding human society.