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LEARNING MODULE #1
DISTANCE EDUCATION
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (GECC 111)
BPED1|MW (7:30-9:00); BSCRIM1|MW (9:00-10:30); BEED1|MW (10:30-12:00);
BSTM1|MW (1:00-2:30); BSOA1|TTH (9:00-10:30); BISM1|TTH (10:30-12:00);
BSA1/BSAB1|TTH (1:00-2:30)

AN OVERVIEW

Adolescence is a developmental stage commonly thought to be a time of physical, emotional,

and psychological vulnerability. Foremost among the concerns of this life stage are issues of self and
identity. The course is intended to enable the process of exploration and thereby help students arrive at
an understanding of the concepts of personality, self and identity. Two major objectives are thus
envisioned: the introduction of major theories of personality – its nature, development and dynamics as
well as those forces and factors that lead to the information of a self and identity; and the provision of
experiential learning so as to ground these theories and perspectives in students’ concerns and issues
relating to their personal self and identity.

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. understand the construct of the self from various disciplinal perspectives: philosophy,
sociology, anthropology and psychology including the more traditional division between the East
and the West;

2. deal with the various aspects that make up the self like biological self, the material self, the
spiritual self, the political self, and the digital self.;

3. discuss on issues or concern for young students which are learning, goal setting and stress.

Topics to be discussed:

 Defining the Self: Personal and Developmental Perspectives on Self and Identity
 Unpacking the Self
 Managing and Caring for the Self

Before proceeding to the actual lesson, you are required to answer the pre-assessment test to
examine how familiar you are with the concepts and theories of the self.

This module is self-instructional. You can read, analyze concepts and ideas presented, and reflect on
them. The activities and Self-Check Questions (SCQ) will help you assess how you progress as you go
through this module. If you need help and further clarification, you can ask for the assistance of your
teacher at the end of every week personally or through online for feed backing and monitoring of your
progress.

Your answers to the SCQ and Activities will be evaluated by your teacher. This will be part of your
formative evaluation.

DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING IN THIS MODULE. FOR PRE-ASSESSMENT, WRITE YOUR ANSWERS ON
THE SAME PAGE AND FOR ACTIVITIES AND SELF-CHECK QUESTIONS, YOUR ANSWERS SHOULD BE
WRITTEN IN A SEPARATE SHEET TO BE SUBMITTED TO YOUR TEACHER ON OR BEFORE THE DEADLINE.
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UNDERSTANDING THE SELF (GECC 111)

PRE-ASSESSMENT

Name: __________________________________ Course/Yr.: _________ Date Submitted: ________

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LEARNING MODULE 1: DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES

ON SELF AND IDENTITY

INTRODUCTION Understanding the Self is a fundamental course in the General Education

Curriculum for tertiary education. It is designed to help the students understand
the nature of identity including factors that influence and shape personal identity.

Today, issues of self and identity are very critical to adolescents. This course was
conceptualized to aid undergraduate students develop a more critical and
reflective attitude in exploring the issues and concerns of the self and identity for a
better and proper way of understanding one’s self. It emphasizes the integration of
personal daily experiences of the students with their learning experiences inside
the classroom to encourage them to improve themselves for a better quality of life
(Alata, Caslib, Jr., Serafica & Pawilen 2018).
LEARNING OBJECTIVES At the end of the module, you should be able to:
1. explain why is it essential to understand the self;
2. describe and discuss the different ways by which society and culture shape
the self;
3. identify the different ideas in psychology about the "self";
4. create a representation of the Filipino self.
LEARNING RESOURCES  Alata, E. J., Caslib Jr., B. N., Serafica, J. P., & Pawilen, R. A. (2018).
Understanding the Self. Rex Book Store, Inc..Manila.
LEARNING INPUTS
LEARNING ACTIVITIES
SELF-CHECK QUESTIONS (SCQ)
Lesson 1 THE SELF FROM THE VARIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE
Our names represent who we are. Our names signify us. A name is not the person
itself no matter how intimately bound it is with the bearer. It is only a signifier. The
self is something that a person perennially molds, shapes and develops. The self is
not a static thing that one is simply born with like a mole on one’s face or is just
assigned by one’s parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to discover one’s
self.

Along with the many questions about everything, the earliest thinkers were
preoccupied with questions about the self. They are the Greeks. The Greeks
seriously questioned myths and were also the ones who moved away from them in
an attempt to understand reality and to answer questions about curiosity including
the self. To fully understand the different viewpoints of the self, it is wise to revisit
its prime movers and identify the most important speculations made by
philosophers from ancient times to the contemporary period.

⋆ Socrates and Plato

⋆ Pre-socratics were preoccupied at the primary substratum, arche
(beginning or origin, explains the multiplicity of things in the world).
⋆ Socrates question about something else. He was more concerned
about the problem of the self. He was also the 1st philosopher who
ever engaged in a systematic (orderly, methodical) questioning about
“True knowledge the self.
exists knowing that ⋆ His Life-long mission: the true task of the philosopher is to know
you know nothing.”
oneself. Socrates affirmed that an unexamined is not worth living.
- Socrates
⋆ Gadfly (annoying person): he was accused because of disturbing men
and shook them off in order to reach truth and wisdom. According to
Socrates, most men are not fully aware of who they were and the
virtues that they were to attain to preserve their souls for the afterlife.
“The essence of ⋆ The worst that can happen to man: to live but die inside. Every man is
knowledge is self- composed of body and soul: every person is dualistic or composed of
knowledge.” two aspects of his personhood. Body: imperfect, impermanent aspect,
- Plato
St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
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Soul: perfect and permanent

⋆ Plato supported his teacher’s idea: that man is dual in nature of body
and soul.
⋆ Three components of the soul:
⋆ Rational Soul – forged by reason and intellect has to
govern the affairs of the human body
⋆ Spirited Soul – emotions should be kept at bay
⋆ Appetitive Soul – base desires like eating, drinking,
“I think therefore I am.”
- Rene Descartes sleeping and having sex are controlled
⋆ Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be
attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with
one another.
⋆ Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
⋆ Augustine
⋆ His view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the
medieval world when it comes to man. According to him, man
is bifurcated in nature. An aspect of man dwells on the world
and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine
and the other is capable of reaching immortality.
Body: bound to die on earth, Soul: is anticipated to live eternally in
a realm of spiritual bliss with God.
⋆ Thomas Aquinas
⋆ He declared that man is composed of two parts: matter and
form. Matter or hyle in greek: refers to the common stuff that
makes up everything in the universe. Man’s body is part of this
matter. Form or morphe in greek: refers to the essence of a
substance or thing. It is what makes it is.
⋆ The body of human person is something that he shares even
with animals. Even his cells are also present in every living
thing or any organic being in the world. But his soul or essence
is what makes him different, it animates the body; it is what
makes us humans.
⋆ Rene Descartes
⋆ He is the father of Modern Philosophy. He conceived that the
human person is composed of having a body and mind.
Famous lines: cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore, I am.”
⋆ He stated that the fact that one thinks should lead one to
conclude without a doubt that he exists. The self for Descartes
is also a combination of two distinct entities: cogito, the thing
that thinks which is the mind, and extenza or extension of the
mind which is the body. The body is nothing else but a
machine that is attached to the mind. All of us have it but it
not makes man a man.
⋆ David Hume, Scottish philosopher
⋆ empiricist: one can know only what come from the senses and
experiences. The self is not an entity over and beyond the
physical body.
⋆ Empiricism: a school of thought that promotes the idea that
knowledge can only be possible if it sensed and experienced.
Men can only attain knowledge be experiencing.
⋆ Example: Jezza knows Lady as another human person
not because she can see her soul but by the fact that
she can see her, hear her stories or even hug her.
⋆ If one tries to examine his experiences, you will find out that is
categorized into two: impressions and ideas.
⋆ Impressions: the basic objects of our experience or sensation.
They form the core of our thoughts. When one touches an ice
cube, the cold sensation is an impression. They are vivid or
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clear because they came from our direct experience with the
world.
⋆ Ideas: copies of impressions. They are not as lively and vivid as
our impressions. When one imagines the feeling of falling in
love for the first time, that still is an idea.
⋆ Immanuel Kant
⋆ To him, there is necessarily a mind that organizes the
impressions that men get from the external world.
⋆ Example: time and space are ideas that one cannot find in the
world but is built in our minds. He calls these apparatuses of
the mind.
⋆ He suggests that the self is actively engaged intelligence in
man that integrates all knowledge and experience.
⋆ The self is not the only who gives man his personality. It is
also a seat of knowledge of knowledge achievement for all
human persons.
⋆ Gilbert Ryle
⋆ To him, what truly matters is the behavior that the person manifests in
his day to day life. Looking and trying to understand the self is like
looking for the university. There is no university but everything that is
involved that makes one a university.
⋆ Self: is not an entity one can locate and analyze but simply the
convenient name that people use to refer all the behaviors that people
make.
⋆ Merleau-Ponty
⋆ Phenomenologist
⋆ He asserted that the mind-body bifurcation (split) is a futile
(pointless) and an invalid (untrue) problem. The mind and
body are so intertwined that they cannot be separated from
one another.
⋆ One cannot find any experience that is not an embodied (in
person) experience.
⋆ He dismisses the Cartesian Dualism. It is a plain
misunderstanding. The living body, the thoughts, emotions
and experiences are all one.
(Answer Activity 1.1 and SCQ 1.1)
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Lesson 2 THE SELF, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE

With the new ways of knowing and growth of the social sciences, the self has been
reexamined. Thinkers settled on the idea that there are two components of the
human person and whatever the relationship these two have cannot deny the fact
that there is a self.

Tarzan became an animal, in effect, his sole interaction with the apes and other
animals made him just like one of them. Human persons will not develop as
human persons without intervention. Tarzan’s story challenges the long standing
notion that humans are special among living beings. Our selves are not special
because of the soul infused into us. We may have the gift to rationalize things but
at the end of the day, our growth and development and ourselves are products of
our interaction with external reality.

⋆ Self: separate, self-contained, independent, consistent, unitary, and

private.
⋆ Separate – the self is distinct from other selves
⋆ Self-contained and independent – it does not require any other
self for it to exist
⋆ Consistent – allows itself to be studied, described, and measured.
Self’s traits, characteristics, tendencies, and potentialities are
more or less the same.
⋆ Unitary – it is the center of all experiences and thoughts that run
through a certain person.
⋆ Private – each person sorts out information, feelings and
emotions, and thought processes within the self. This whole
process is never accessible to anyone else.
⋆ The self is at the mercy of the external forces that bump and collides with
it. It is ever-changing and dynamic, allowing external influences to take
part in its shaping.
⋆ Social Constructionist Perspective.
⋆ Social constructionists argue that the self has to be seen as
something that in unceasing flux, in a constant struggle with
external reality and is malleable in its dealing with the society.
⋆ The self is always in participation with social life and its identity subjected
to influences here and there. The self is multifaceted. We ourselves play
different roles, act in different ways depending on our circumstances and
this shifting of selves are normal and expected. The self is capable of
morphing and fitting itself into any circumstances it finds itself in.

The Self and Culture

⋆ Remaining the same person and turning chameleon by adapting to one’s
context is paradoxical.
⋆ French Anthropologist: Marcel Maus
⋆ Every self has two faces: personne and moi
⋆ Moi: refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and his basic
identity, his biological givenness. Moi is a person’s basic identity.
Personne: is composed of the social concepts of what it means to
be who he is. It has much to do with what it means to live in a
particular institution, a particular family, a particular religion, a
particular nationality, and how to behave given expectations and
influences from others.

The Self and the Development of the Social World

⋆ More than his givenness (personality, tendencies, etc.) one is believed to
be in active participation in the shaping of the self.
⋆ Men and women are not born with particularities that they can no
longer change.
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Mead and Vygotsky

⋆ The way that human persons develop is with the use of language
acquisition and interaction with others. The way that we process
information is normally a form of an internal dialogue in our head.
⋆ Cognitive and emotional development of a child: a mimicry of how it is
done in the social world, in the external reality where he is in.
⋆ Vygotsky and Mead: treats the “human mind” as something that is made,
constituted through language as experienced in the external world and as
encountered in dialogs with others.
⋆ Mead: the child assumes the “other” through language and role-play. Ex.
toys
⋆ Vygotsky: a child internalizes real-life dialogs that he has had with others,
with his family, his primary caregiver, or his playmates. Ex. What they
watch in TV

Self in Families
⋆ Sociologists focused on the different institutions and powers at play in the
society. The most prominent is the family.
⋆ The kind of family that we are born in, the resources available to
us (human spiritual, economic) and the kind of development that
we will have will certainly affect us as we go through life.
⋆ In trying to achieve the goal of becoming a fully realized human, a child
enters a system of relationships, most important of which is the family.
⋆ Human beings are born helpless
⋆ Dependence to parents is longer than most other animals
⋆ Human persons learns the way of living and selfhood by being in a family.
Through observation, babies learn to internalize ways and styles through
imitation.
⋆ Internalizing behavior may either be conscious or unconscious.
(table manners; rewards and punishments).
⋆ It is then clear that those who develop and eventually grow to become
adult who still did not learn simple matters like basic manners of conduct
failed in internalizing due to parental or familial failure to initiate them
into the world.

Gender and the Self

⋆ Social sciences and the self-argued that it is important to give one the
leeway to find, express and live his identity.
⋆ One maneuvers into the society and identifies himself as who he is
by also taking note of gender identities.
⋆ Our gender partly determines how we see ourselves in the world.
⋆ Example: Husbands in the Philippines, patriarchal
⋆ Nancy Chodorow: a feminist, argues that mothers take the role of taking
care of children, there is a tendency for girls to imitate the same. Men are
taught on how to behave like a man which includes holding in one’s
emotion, being tough, fatalistic not to worry about danger, and admiration
for hard physical labor.
⋆ Example: circumcision
⋆ Gender has to be personally discovered and asserted and not dictated by
culture and the society.
(Answer SCQ 1.2)
Lesson 3 THE SELF AS COGNITIVE CONSTRUCT
Psychology may focus on the individual and the cognitive functions, but it does not
discount the context and other possible factors that affect the individual. This
lesson provides an overview of the themes of psychology regarding the “self.”

⋆ William James (1890)

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⋆ He was one of the earliest psychologists to study the self.

⋆ Two aspects of the self: the “I” and the “me.”
⋆ “I” – thinking, acting, and feeling self
⋆ “me” – physical characteristics and psychological
capabilities that makes you who you are.
⋆ Carl Rogers
⋆ “I” – the and he one who acts and decides
⋆ “me” – what you think or feel about yourself.
⋆ Carl Rogers captured this idea in his concept of self-schema or our
organized system or collection of knowledge about who we are.
The schema may include your interests, work, course, age, name,
and physical characteristics, etc. As you grow and adapt to the
changes around you, they also change. But they are no passive
receivers, they actively shape and affect how you see, think, and
feel about things.

⋆ Sigmund Freud
⋆ Saw the self, mental processes and one’s behavior as the results of
the interaction between the Id, the Ego and the Superego. Even
Freud and other theorists cannot fully discount the huge and
important effect of the environment. Social interaction always has
a part to play in who we think we are.

Symbolic Interactionism Theory

⋆ G.H. Mead (1934) argued that the self is created and developed through
human interaction.
⋆ Self-awareness
⋆ Carver and Scheier (1981) identified two types of self that we can
be aware of:
⋆ The private self or your internal standards and private thoughts
and feelings; and the public self or your public image commonly
geared toward having a good presentation of yourself to others.
⋆ Self-esteem
⋆ It is defined as our own positive or negative perception or
evaluation of ourselves.
⋆ Social Comparison Theory
⋆ We learn about ourselves, the appropriateness of our behaviors,
as well as our social status by comparing aspects of ourselves with
other people.
⋆ Downward social comparison - We create a positive self-
concept by comparing ourselves with those who are worse
off than us.
⋆ Upward social comparison - Comparing ourselves with
those better off than us. It can be a form of motivation for
some, but a lot actually felt lower self-esteem as they
highlight more of their weakness or inequalities.
⋆ Narcissism
⋆ Is a trait characterized by overly high self-esteem, self-admiration,
and self-centeredness.
(Answer SCQ 1.3)
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Lesson 4 THE SELF IN WESTERN AND EASTERN THOUGHTS

Different cultures and varying environments tend to create different perceptions
of the “self” and one of the most common distinctions between cultures and
people is the Eastern-vs-Western dichotomy wherein Eastern represents Asia and
Western represents Europe and Northern America.

It must be reiterated that while countries who are geographically closer to each
other may share commonalities, there are also a lot of factors that create
differences. There are a lot of sources in which you can analyze the perspective of
each culture and country about the concept of “self”.

You can see it in their literature like how one culture depicts a hero or villain in
their stories. You can see it in their social organization like how they see their boss
or their subordinate. Artworks, dances, even clothing may show you clues about
the “self.” Religious beliefs and political philosophies greatly influenced the
mindset of each nation or culture.

1. Confucianism
⋆ Confucianism can be seen as a code of ethical conduct of how one
should properly act according to their relationship with other
people; thus it is also focused on having harmonious social life (Ho
1995).
⋆ Self-cultivation is seen as the ultimate purpose of life but the
characteristics of a chun-tzu, a man of virtue or noble character, is
still embedded in his social relationships.
⋆ The cultivated self is called as “subdued self” wherein personal
needs are repressed (subdued) for the good of many, making
Confucian society also hierarchal for the purpose of maintaining
order and balance in society.

2. Taoism
⋆ Taoism is living in the way of the Tao or the universe. The self is
not an extension of the family or the community; it is part of the
universe.
⋆ The ideal self is selflessness but this is not forgetting about the
self, it is living a balanced life with society and nature, being open
and accepting to change, forgetting about prejudices and
egocentric ideas and thinking about equality as well as
complementarily among humans as well as other beings.
⋆ In this way, you will be able to act spontaneously because you will
not be restricted by some legalistic standards but because you are
in harmony with everything.

3. Buddhism
⋆ The self is seen as an illusion, born out of ignorance, of trying to
hold and control things, or human-centered needs; thus, the self is
also the source of all these sufferings. It is therefore, our quest to
forget about the self, forget the cravings of the self, break the
attachments you have with the world, and to renounce the self
which is the cause of all the suffering and in doing so, attain the
state of Nirvana.

Western perspective does not discount the role of environment and society in the
formation of the self but the focus is always looking toward the self. (refer to p.
38) Western thought looks at the world in dualities wherein you are distinct from
the other person, the creator is separate from the object he created, in which the
self is distinguished and acknowledged.
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Eastern perspective sees the other person as part of yourself as well as things you
may create, a drama in which everyone is interconnected with their specific roles.

(Answer Activity 1.2)

 POINTS TO Google Classroom:
REMEMBER a. Concepts/Theories: Long Quiz
b. Performance Task: Online Oral Recitation/Interactive Discussion
Email/Social Media:
a. Submission of Outputs
ASSESSMENT  Quizzes through Kahoot! App or Google Forms
 Completion of activities and SCQ’s
 Output submission in every topic discussed
 Participation during online class
FEEDBACK  Feedbacking will be done through face to face (scheduled) and online
(Email, Messenger or Facebook Group).