THE SELF AND ITS NATURE

Prepared by:Katleen T.

MartinBM201A

“Every man is three men: the man he thinks he is, the man others think he is, and the man he really

is.”

Real Self

Ideal Self

that which a person must rationally admit to be the actual

that which a person would aspire to become

In an effort to understand himself, man must understand HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT, and the SELF, since these three shape him into the recognizable mold of human beings.

HeredityHuman 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.

Environment Man’s physical and

socio-cultural environment heavily influence the extent to which his genetic potentials are realized.

Squatter’s area

Teens in USA

The SelfWhen 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.

Observe what one has to say about the self:

“I have an image about myself. Physically, I’m slender; I have short hair; and I have a preference for my clothing style. I am the nervous type, that which I would most like to eliminate. But despite this, I can say that I can still enjoy my life. I’m optimistic, sometimes overly so. Basically, I like myself the way I am now.”

Nature of the SelfSelf is awareness or consciousness. If you

subtract the objects that appear in awareness and the activities that place in reflected awareness (the human mind.. perception, experience, memory, thought, emotion, imagination, intuition, etc.) you are left with simple, ordinary, uncontaminated impersonal awareness.

According to Charles H. Cooley, the self is any idea or system of ideas which is associated with the appropriate attitude we call self-feeling.

3 Principal Elements of Self

1. the imagination of our appearance to other persons

2. the imagination of his judgment of that appearance

3. some sort of self-feeling such as pride or mortification