What is the

relationship between
the external reality
and the self?
A little boy named
Tarzan was left in the
middle of the forest

Growing up, he never

had any interaction
with human beings.

Tarzan grew up ineracting with apes and other animals. Thus, he acts
like apes. Tarzan became an animal, in effect.
• Disappointedly, human persons will not develop
like human persons without intervention
• We may be gifted with intellect and the capacity
to rationalize things but at the end of the day,
our growth and development and
consequentially, our selves are truly products of
our interaction with external reality.
How much of who
you are now is a
product of your
community?
The Self, Society and
Culture
Xides Leonore P. Conwi, LPT
What is the self?

“Separate, self-contained,
independent, consistent, unitary, and
private.
(Stevens, 1996)
Self as Separate
• Self is distinct from other selves
• It is always unique and has its own identity
• One cannot be another person, even twins.
Self as Self-Contained and Independent
• Its distinctiveness allows is to be self-
contained with its characteristics and volition
• It does not require other self to exist.
Self as Consistent
• It has a personality that is enduring and therefore can
be expected to persist for quite some time
• Its consistency allows it to be studied, described, and
measured.
• Consistency means that a particular self’s traits,
characteristics, tendencies and potentialities are more
or less the same.
 Self as Unitary
• It is the center of all experiences and thought that run
through a certain person
• It is like the chief command post in an individual where all
processes, emotions, and thoughts converge.
 Self as Private
• Each person sorts out information, feelings and emotions,
and thought processes within the self.
• This whole proves is never accessible to anyone but the
self.
• The self is isolated from the external world
• The self is always at the mercy of external circumstances
that bump and collide with it.
 Social Constructionist Perspective
• Social constructivists argue that the self should not be seen
as a static entity that stays constant through and through.
• The self has to be seen as malleable in its dealings with
society.
Self is truly multifaceted

This is Mark. He is a Math Professor at a

Catholic University. Mark has a beautiful wife
whom he met in college, Mary. Apart from being
a husband, Mark is also blessed with two doting
kids, a son and a daughter. He also sometimes
serves in the church as a lector and a
commentator.
Self is truly multifaceted
When Mark is in the university, he conducts
himself in a matter that befits his title as a
professor.

As a husband, Mark can be intimate and touchy.

Mary considers him sweet .

His kids fear him. As a father, he is stern.

As a lector and commentator, his churchmates

knew him as a guy who is calm, all-smiles, and
always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone in
need.
Are we being hypocritical by playing
different roles and acting in different
ways depending on the circumstances?

No. It is only normal, acceptable and expected.

 0
1
The Self and
Culture
Marcel Mauss • Remaining the same person and
turning chameleon by adapting
to one’s context seems
paradoxical.
• Every self has two faces:
personne and moi
• Moi refers to a person’s sense of
who he is, his body, and basic
identity.
• Personne is composed of the
social concepts of what it means
to be who he is.
In the previous story…

How will you

identify the moi and
personne of Mark
from the previous
story?
Personne of Filipino Cross-Culturally
• In the Philippines, many people violate jay-walking rules.
A common Filipino treats roads, even national ones, as
basically his and so he just crosses whenever and wherever
he is.
• When the same Filipino visits another country with strict
traffic rules, say Singapore, they suddenly become law-
abiding people.
Personne of Filipino Cross-Culturally
 Territory
• Filipinos tend to consider their territory as a part of who they
are.
• This includes considering their immediate surrounding as a
part of them, thus “Tapat ko, linis ko.”
• Filipinos most probably do not consider national roads as
something external to who they are so they cross whenever
they want.
Language
• Mahal kita = I love you
• The Filipino brand of this articulation does not
specify the subject and the object of love; there is no
specification of who loves and who is loved.
• In Filipino, “mahal” can both mean “love” and
“expensive”
Language
• Our language is gender-neutral
• English = he/she; Spanish = el/ella
• Filipino = siya
 02
The Self and the
Development of the
Social World
• More than his givenness (personality, tendencies, and
propensities, among others), one is believed to be in
active participation in shaping the self.
• Human persons are just passive reactors
• Most often, we believe that we are born with
particularities that we can no longer change. However,
recent studies indicated that men and women engage
actively in shaping the self.
Mead and Vygotsky

• Human persons develop with the

use of language acquisition and
interaction with others.
• The way we process information is
normally from an internal dialogue
in our head
Mead and Vygotsky
• Human mind is made,
constituted through the
language as experienced
in the external world and
as encountered in
dialogues with others.

Tabula rasa – blank slate

Mead and Vygotsky

• Imagine a child internalizing his

dialogue script while he is playing.
• Notice how children eventually become
what they watch?
• Notice how children can easily adopt
ways of cartoon characters they are
exposed to?
 03
The Self in
Families
The Self in Families
• While every child is born with certain givenness,
disposition coming from his parent’s genes and
general condition of life, the impact of one’s family is
still deemed as a given in understanding the self
• Nature vs. Nurture
The Self in Families
• A human learns the ways of living by being in a
family.
• It is what a family initiates a person to become that
serves as the basis for the person’s progress.
The Self in Families
• The kind of family we are born in, the resources available to us
(human, spiritual, economic), will certainly affect us and the
kind of development that we will have as we go through life.
 04
Gender and the
Self
Gender and the Self
• Gender is one of those loci of the self that is subject to
altercation, change, and development.
• In the past years, we have seen people fought hard for the right
to express, validate, and assert their gender expression
• Many conservatives don’t accept this and insists on the
biological
Gender and the Self
• From the point of view of social
sciences, it is important to give one
the leeway to find, express, and live
his identity.
Gender and the Self
• From the point of view of social
sciences, it is important to give one
the leeway to find, express, and live
his identity.
Society forces a particular
identity unto us
depending on our sex
and/or gender
Gender and the Self
• The gendered self is then shaped within a
particular context of time and space.
• The individual should fit a particular
environment.
Gender and the Self
• Gender must be personally discovered
and asserted and not dictated by culture
and the society.