THE SELF AND ITS

DEVELOPMENT JOURNEYING
BACK TO ONE'S SELF
 The Significance of the Self

• The world has become sophisticated and

complicated. Advances in technology
make man's life as sophisticated and
complicated, too.
• Amidst this sophistication and
complexities, man tries to search for
meaning. This search never stops to the
extent that man realizes he needs to
reflect on his own self.
 The Significance of the Self

• The following basic questions confront

man in this modern: "Who am I?", "Why
am I here?", What is the purpose of my
existence?".
• The following poem illustrates the
continuing search of man for his own self:
 Who Am I?

Who am I? Who am I? My clothes? My work? My

mode? No!

Am I my parents? Brothers? Friends? Am I they? I

think I am different from them.

Just who am I? Am I my name?

My face? My bones? My breath?
My feelings? My thought? and Memory?
Each of them is a part of me
But not me
 Who am I really? What is the truth?
I'm alive, enthusiastic, free, and unique

Above all, like God, I love.

All this, I am --- my innermost being.
Who am I? Who am I?
I AM A PERSON
 Heredity, Environment and the
Self
• In an effort to understand himself, man
must understand (a) heredity, (b)
environment, and (c) the self, since these
three shape him into the recognizable
mold of human beings.
• Then, he can focus especially on the
development and functioning of the self-
system and his search for significant
selfhood.
 Heredity, Environment and the Self

• Human life really begins at conception

when the egg cell of the female is fertilized
by the sperm cell of the male. At that point,
the human being receives a genetic
inheritance which provides the basic
potentialities for his development and
behavior.
• Heredity provides common potentialities
for development and behavior typical of
the human species and is an important
source of individual differences.
 Heredity, Environment and the Self

• Environment. Man's physical and socio-

cultural environment heavily influence the
extent to which his genetic potentials are
realized. Each person receives a genteic
inheritance which is the end product of
million of years of evolution; phe also
rececives a socio-cultural inheritance
which is the end product of thousands of
years of social evolution.
 Heredity, Environment and the Self
• The Self. When psychologists refer to the
self, they do not think of some "little
person" sitting in the brain, but rather a
concept necessary for explaining the many
aspects of our perception, feeling,
thinking, and behavior.
• The self cannot be observed directly but is
inferred from various behaviors that can
be observed.
Nature of the Self
• In the words of George Herbert Mead, to
have a self is to have the capacity to
observe, respond to, and direct one's own
behavior.
• One can behave towards oneself as one
can towards any other social object.
• One can evaluate, blame, encourage, and
despair about oneself; one can alter one's
behavior.
 Characteristics of the Self

• The self is not an entity, but a process

• The self is reflexive
• The self is comprised of attitudes
• The self is the means whereby social
control becomes self control
 Development of the Self
• The individual's self-concept is his picture
of himself -- his views of himself as distinct
fromf other persons and things. The self-
concept incorporates:
– his perceptions of who he is (self-identity)
– his feelings of worth and adequacy (self-
evaluation);
– his picture of the person he could be and
should be (self-ideal).
• Self-direction
 Our Frame of Reference

• Key elements in the individual's frame of

reference are the assumptions he makes
concerning reality, value and possibility.
– Assumptions concerning reality.
– Assumptions about values
– Assumptions concerning possibility
 The Self According to Different Authors

• William James - According to James, the

self incorporates feelings and attitudes
along with a principle of causality. He used
the term "self" to have three meanings: (a)
a dynamic process, (b) a system of
awareness, and (c) interrelated process
and awareness.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• G.A Allport - He calls the ego - which has

the appropriate function in the personality -
the self. The "properium" comprises
awareness of the self and striving activity.
It includes bodily sense, self-image, self-
esteem, and identity.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• Sigmund Freud - is noted for his theory of

psychoanalysis. He gave the ego a central
place in his theory of personality structure.
According to him, the ego decides what
instincts to satisfy as well as in what
manner to satisfy them,
 The Self According to Different Authors

• George H. Mead - He views the self as an

object of awareness. He claims that the
person responds to himself with certain
feelings and attitudes as others respond to
him. He becomes self-conscious (aware)
by the way people react to him as an
object.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• K. Lewing - According to him, the self-

concept is represented by a life space
region which determines present belief
about the self. Life space includes the
individual's universe of personal
experience as a space in which he moves.
Goals, evaluations, ideas, perceptions, of
significant objects, future plans and
events, all form part of the life space of the
person.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• H. Lundholm - He distinguished a
subjective self from an objective self. The
subjective self is mainly what a person
thinks about himself.
• Sherif and Cantril - they asserted that the
self is an object and the ego is the
process. They conceive the ego as a
constellation of attitudes that includes
personal identity, values, possessions, and
feelings of worth.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• P.M Symonds - He incorporated the

psychoanalytic theory of Freud and the
social philosophy and the as the manner in
which the individual reacts to himself. The
ego functions more effectively when the
self as confident and held in high regard.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• R.B Catell - He considers the self as the

principal organizing influence exerted
upon man which gives stability and order
to human behavior. He introduces the
processes of self-observation. He
distinguish the real self from the ideal self.
– Real Self - that which a person must
rationally admit to be the actual.
– Ideal self - that which a person would aspire
to become.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• G. Murphy - He defines "self" as the

individual as known to the individual. To
him, the major activities of the ego are to
defend and/or enhance the self complex..
• Carl Rogers - He believes in the
discontinuity of the unconscious and the
conscious. According to him, people
behave in terms of the ways in which they
see themselves.
 The Self According to Different Authors

• D. Snygg and A.W Combs - In their

phenomenological theory, they claim that
all behavior, without exception, is
completely determined by and pertinent to
the phenomenal field of the behaving
organism.
• As exemplified in the following poem,
children grow up in an environment. As
such, the self is affected by what is
happening in this environment.
 Children Learn What They Live

If a child lives with criticism, He learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility, He learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, He learns to be shy
If a child lives with tolerance, He learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, He learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, He learns to appreciate
If a child lives with fairness, He learns justice.
If a child lives with security, He learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval; He learns to like himself
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, He learns to
find love in the world.
 SELF-ESTEEM
• Man experiences his desire for self-
esteem as an urgent imperative, as a
basic need. Self-esteem has two
interrelated aspects; it entails a sense of
personal efficacy and a sense of personal
worth. It is the integrated sum of self-
confidence and self-respect. It is the
conviction that one is competent to live
and worthy of living. Man's search for self-
esteem is inherent in his nature.
 SELF-CONFIDENCE

• This refers to the sense of efficacy.

• Self-confidence is confidence in one's
mind.
• It is the conviction that one is competent to
think, to judge, to know and to correct
one's errors.
• Man possesses the ability to make
choices. These choices are involved in
three fundamental epistemological
alternatives:
1. A man can achieve and maintain a sharp
mental focus, seeking to bring his
understanding to an optimal level of
precision and clarity --- or he can keep his
focus to the level of blurred approximation,
in a state of passive, undiscriminating,
goalless mental drifting.
2. A man can differentiate between
knowledge and feelings, letting his
judgement be directed by his intellect, not
his emotions -- or he can suspend his
intellect under the pressure of strong
feelings (desires or fears), and deliver
himself to the direction of impulses whose
validity he does not care to consider
3. A man can perform an independent act of
analysis, in weighing the truth or falsehood
of any claim, or the righ, or wrong, of any
issue -- or he can accept, in uncritical
passivity. The opinions and assertions of
others, substituting their for his own.
 SELF-RESPECT

• This refers to the sense of worthiness. A

man's character is the sum of the
principles and values that guide his
actions in the face of moral choices.
• Man needs self-respect because he has to
act to achieve value -- and in order to act,
he needs to value the beneficiary of his
action.
 SELF-ESTEEM and PRIDE

• Self-esteem is confidence in one's

capacity to achieve values.
• Pride is the consequence of having
achieved some particular of values.
• Self-esteem is "I can", while pride is "I
have".
 Factors Affecting self-esteem are the
following:
• Attitudes of adults towards the growing
infant and child;
• Emotionally disastrous experience of the
individual, considered as a threat to self,
which affects his stability.
• Self-attitudes are also affected by the
status of the group to which a person
belong; and
• The indiviudal's role and status in the
group.
 Plural Participation of the Self

• Social Distance
• Identification
• Assismilation
 Plural Participation of the Self

• Social Distance - It measures the degree

of intimacy or remoteness, of acceptance
or rejection, in social relations. In the case
of cultural hybrid, there is a high degree of
social distance. On the whole, the greater
the marginality of an individual, the greater
is the social distance separating him from
his group.
 Plural Participation of the Self

• Identification - In this process, the

individual takes over the ideas, beliefs,
and habits of the members of a group and
makes them his own. For the cultural
hybrid, this involves the partial acceptance
of the culture of the group of which he is a
new member. Identification involves some
degree of understanding sympathy for an
cooperation with the new group.
 Plural Participation of the Self

• Assimilation - This is the final stage in the

imperceptible transmission form cultural
hybridity to cultural fusion. The cultural
hybrid, once a divided self, is now an
integrated.
ADJUSTMENT AND ENHANCEMENT OF
THE SELF
 The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
1. Self-defense and self-enhancement -
These techniques have been derived from
the psychoanalytic mechanisms.The
functions of self-defense are to keep intact
and to conceal its nature whenever the
individual's self-image is likely to be
exposed. Self-enhancement functions to
permit the individual to achieve the goals
and ideals he has established for himself.
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
2. Repression - Psychologically, this is a
form of selective forgetting. The selection
of what we forget is determined to a large
extent by the degree of pain which
accompanies socially disaproved behavior.
On the whole, we tend to remember
pleasant experiences more permanently
than unpleasant ones, because of
disapproval by others in the past arouses
a feeling of guilt.
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
3. Fantasy - This technique is used by the
individual in his earliest attempts to adjust
himself to changes in his environment.
The imaginative control of the environment
is an important factor in the maturation of
the child. The adult uses fantasy to
overcome frustrations. Fantasies may be
adopted in three ways:
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
The adult uses fantasy to overcome
frustrations. Fantasies may be adopted in
three ways:
– Some persons may try to compensate for
their wishes by daydreaming to experience
temporary resolution to tensions;
– other people would prefer to stay in their
fantasies since they become so gratified; and
– people may put their fantasies to effective use
and return from the realm of fantasy with
something to show for their trip
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
4. Compensation - It is a mechanism of
adjustment that all people resort to in the
face of frustration, failure, and other
threats to the self. It is a technique
whereby the individual makes up for
weaknesses or defects by emphasizing his
strengths and assets. Its adjustive function
lies in its use as a means of overcoming
weaknesses, limitations, and defeat by
drawing attention to favorable
characteristics,real or fancied.
• It serves in the following ways:
– a substitute for achievement along another
line;
– relief from the tension which frustration
begets; and
– a means of concealing from others and from
the frustrated individual his own weaknesses
or deficiency.
 The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
5. Rationalization - As a mechanism of
adjustment, rationalization is a technique
of self-concealment and self-justification. It
is a mechanism used by the self to
forestall criticism or to defend him against
the distress of facing his own failure. The
real motive behind reationalization is a
desire for mastery, for social approval, for
appearing superior to what we are. It is a
form of making excuses.
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
6. Projection - It is closely related to
rationalization. One's weakness is not in
himself but in another. Through projection,
the individual guards himself form
exposure, disapproval or punishment by
ascribing his faults to others. It may be
viewed as a defense against anxiety.
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
7. Fixation and regression - Fixation is the
arrest of development at an immature
level. A person develops normally up to a
certain point and them remains at that
level. People who "never grow up"
illustrate this kind of adjustment. On the
other hand, regression means the return to
an earlier mode of adjustment after a
mature form had already been attained.
 The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
8. Identification and Sublimation -
Identification consists, to a large extent, in
erecting a model for the self to
imitate.Meanwhile, sublimation refers to
the need of the socialized individuals to
redirect forbidden urges into socially
acceptable forms of behavior.
The Following are some techniques for
adjustment
9. Self-Enhancement - the tendency of
every organism is to return to a condition
of repose or equilibrium when its needs
are satisfied.
 AUTHENCITY AND BECOMING

• The following are useful pointers for one's

moving into authenticity and the process of
becoming:
– Increased Autonomy
– More adequate assumptions
– Improved competencies
– Increased awareness and openness to
experience
• Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-
generated action. Every achievement of man is
a value in itself, but it is also a stepping stone to
a greater achievement and values. Life is
growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward.
Life remains life, only so long as it advances.
The desire to grow in knowledge and skills, in
understanding and control, is the expression of a
man's commitment to the life process -- and to
the state of being human. It must be emphasized
that productive achievement is a consequence
and an expression of healthy self-esteem, not its
cause.