WHAT IS SELF, DEFINITION,EXPLANATION

SELF –DEFINITIONS

 According to Ausubel, 1952

The self has been defined as the combination of one’s physical appearance, personal memories, and sensory images.

 According to Yinger,

He characterizes the self as the mental images of the “who I am” or “what I want to be”.

 According to Sullivan 

He conceptualized the self as an organization of educative experiences called into being by the necessity to avoid or to minimize incidents of anxiety.

EXPLANATION

Social scientists generally refer to perceptions of the self as an individual self concept or feelings of itself-esteem. The self-concept is more general than self esteem and includes an identification of the characteristics of the individual as well as an evaluation of them. 

Example: A person’s self concept may be built around the perception that he or she is a good tennis player. Self esteem is sometimes used as a synonym of self-concept, but usually it emphasizes the evaluation of the person’s characteristics. An individual with high self esteem feels that he or she is a person of worth who possesses valuable characteristics, experiences, or traits; a person with low self esteem feels incompetent or of little value. Some theorists and researchers have differentiated between different components of the self, the components most frequently identified are the material self and social self. 

The material self: It includes the perceptions the individual has of is or own body, usually determined from the physical sensations provided by various limbs, organs, and parts of the body. A steady stream of sensations indication the body’s state of being, including feelings of touch, pain, and pleasure; the material self is extended beyond the person’s own body and includes other people and objects. A spouse, children, brothers, sisters, work, club, school, house, community or car can become part of an individual’s material self. In this case an attack on any of these persons or objects is experienced as attack on the self, and achievement by them is a source of pride to the self. The social self is defined by the perceptions as person has of the social roles he or she occupies and how they are performed. Students probably conceive of themselves a student, which provides meaning sot the interaction with their fellow students, instructors, and administrators and who they think that others feel about them as students. 

The Social Self: It is possible that a person may have several social selves, one for each of the major social roles occupied in society. Occupational, martial, parental, family, and recreational roles are examples of a few of the major roles around which most people develop a social self.

VARIOUS THEORETICAL APPROACHES/VIEWS 

 Psychoanalytic Theory of the self

 The Symbolic interaction view of the self

 The Behavioral view of the self

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF THE SELF:

Frued believed that the relationship between the individual and a society is conflicting. He argued that people are born with basic drives such as sex and aggression. Society imposes its will on the individual, suppressing and channeling the dries into socially acceptable ways. According to him personality can be divided into three 

THE SYMBOLIC INTERACTION VIEW OF THE SELF 

The early founders (James: Meads; Cooley) of symbolic-interactionist view believe that people are qualitatively different from animals because of their greater ability to use and interpret symbols. According to them language is a set of symbols with shared meanings and enables communication between them. According to this theory, self is the combination of "I" the "knower" and "Me" the "known". James believes that "Me" is more important than "I" because "Me" is a social object that was identified by others response to the person.

Cooley defined the social self as "a system of ideas, drawn from communicative life". He believes that the self develops via the reaction of others to the person. The resulting self-conception was labelled the looking glass self. The self is thus shaped by the responses and interpretations one receives from other people.

 Development of the Self

 Multiple Selves

Development of the Self: According to Cooley (1902), there are three steps in the development of the looking-glass self:

 Imagination of one's appearance to others (dull. intelligent, old. young).

 The imagination of others judgment (the evaluation as positive or negative),

 Some resulting self feeling (satisfaction, embarrassment). It is important to note that the looking-glass self develops from the imagination of the responses of others.            

Herbert Mead's (1968) major innovation was introduced for the first time in the concept of symbolic interaction. He argued that the interaction between people takes place not through simple physical or other sensory contact hut through symbols such as (gestures, facial expressions and above all language). Language is socially learned and is essential for all forms of thought, in this sense the mind -- through which we interpret our own behaviour and that of others—through which we interpret our own behaviour and that of others—is a social product. According to Mead, the essence of socialization process is the ability to anticipate what others expect and to evaluate and control one's behaviour accordingly. This capacity is achieved by role-taking—pretending to take or actually taking the roles of other people, so that one can see oneself from their perspectives. Children internalize the expectations of the significant others, that is specific individuals such as parents. But as they grow older they learn to internalize the expectations of the generalized others, the attitudes and viewpoint of society as a whole. This internalized general concept of social expectations provides the basis for self-evaluation and hence for self-concept. He illustrated this idea by pointing to the childhood progression from mere play to organized games. They walk about in their parents shoes, play with dolls, play house, doctors, police, nurses, and so on. 

Multiple Selves: Symbolic-interaction theory implies that somewhere in the individual there is a "core-sell" that provides meaning and identity as well as direction for action. However, some symbolic interactionists contend that we have multiple selves to deals with social contexts. For example, a teenage boy behaves quite differently before his peer group than he does in front of his parents. Cooley believes that our self-attitudes are at least in pan situationally determined. A harsh and critical police officer may react quite differently when speaking to his children hut this does not eliminate the "core-self" because core-self may provide the boundaries outside of which change will not occur or will occur only infrequently. For example, thee are certain things that the teenage boy will not do in the presence of either —peers, parents—because his core-self finds them too contrary to his/her self-definition. 

THE BEHAVIOURAL VIEW OF THE SELF 

This view defines the self as the collection of several statements a person makes about him/her self. A favourable self concept or high self esteem is stating positive evaluations or receiving high score on a self concept scale and vice versa.

Behaviorists explain that verbal or written self descriptive statements are the only observe action we have of the internal state labeled te self. 

This theory defined the self concept as the frequency of self reinforcement or self punishment. A favourable self concept or high self esteem is conceived of as a high rage of self reinforcement, a negative self concept or low self concept is a high rate of self punishment. In the behaviorist view, two basic processes, respondent conditioning and operant conditioning are used to explain development and change in attitudes, including self attitudes.