Understanding The Self

Psy 110 Understanding the Self
PSYCHOLOGY
At the end of the session the learners must have:
 identified oneself based on William James Theory of Self
 differentiated one’s real self and ideal self
 valued the importance of alignment of oneself
ACTIVITY:THINK, PAIR, SHARE
• On a clean sheet of paper, draw a symbol or symbols of what represents
your “SELF”.
ACTIVITY: MECHANICS
• Go around and look for somebody with the same birthmonth.
• Share your work and explain why you have chosen this symbol.
Analysis:
• How do you feel while sharing your work to your pair?
• Do the activity help you know more about yourself? Why or why not?
William James Theory of Self
• It is divided into two main categories
• “ME” Self refers to the aspects of someone that come from that
person's experiences or known as the “empirical self”.
• ‘I’ Self classified as the thinking self.
• James broke the “ME" self down into three sections:
 The Material Self
• The Social Self
• The Spiritual Self
Material Self
• consists of things that belong to us or that we belong to. Things like family,
clothes, our body, and money are some of what makes up our material
selves.
• The material self refers to tangible objects, people, or places that carry the
designation my or mine. Two subclasses of the material self can be
distinguished: The bodily self and the extracorporeal (beyond the body)
self. Rosenberg (1979) has referred to the extracorporeal self as the
extended self.
• The bodily component of the material self requires little explanation. A
person speaks of my arms or my legs. These entities are clearly an intimate
part of who we are. But our sense of self is not limited to our bodies. It
includes other people (my children), pets (my dog), possessions (my car),
places (my home town), and the products of our labors (my painting).
• It is not the physical entities themselves, however, that comprise the
material self. Rather, it is our psychological ownership of them (Scheibe,
1985). For example, a person may have a favorite chair she likes to sit in.
The chair itself is not part of the self. Instead, it is the sense of
appropriation represented by the phrase “my favorite chair.” This is what
we mean when we talk about the extended self. It includes all of the
people, places, and things that we regard as “ours.”
The Social Self
• refers to how we are regarded and recognized by others
• Our social selves are who we are in a given social situation. For James,
people change how they act depending on the social situation that they are
in. James believed that people had as many social selves as they did social
situations they participated in.
The Social Self
• For James, the spiritual self was who we are at our core. The spiritual self is
more concrete or permanent than the other two selves. The spiritual self is
our subjective and most intimate self. Aspects of an individual's spiritual
self include things like their personality, core values, and conscience that do
not typically change throughout their lifetime.
• The spiritual self is our inner self or our psychological self. It is comprised of
our self-perceived abilities, attitudes, emotions, interests, values, motives,
opinions, traits, and wishes.
REAL SELF VS. IDEAL SELF
• The real self is who we actually are.
 It is how we think, how we feel, look, and act.
 It can be seen by others, but because we have no way of truly
knowing how others view us, the real self becomes our self-image.
• The ideal self is how we want to be.
 It is an idealized image that we have developed over time, based on
what we have learned and experienced.
 May include components of what our parents have taught us, what
we admire in others, what our society promotes, and what we think
is in our best interest.
IMPORTANCE OF ALIGNMENT
• If the way that I am (the real self) is aligned with the way that I want to be
(the ideal self), then I will feel a sense of mental well-being or peace of
mind.
• If the way that I am is not aligned with how I want to be, the
incongruence, or lack of alignment, will result in mental distress or anxiety.
• ➤ The greater the level of incongruence between the ideal self and real
self, the greater the level of resulting distress.

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Psy 110 Understanding the Self

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