Module 1: Philosophical Perspective of the Self

INTRODUCTION
 A meaningful life is one that is lived with others; where there is fulfillment, happiness, continuous desire to
be good not only to one’s self but with other human beings too. What we have and who we are is with the
assistance of the many significant others in our life.
We search for meaning as we age. We always want to understand what is happening around. We try to
question events which are not clear to us. Curiosity plays a great role in harnessing the inquisitive mind.
Sometimes answers to our queries are not readily available, hence we continue to explore.
          While others may respond to us, we do not always settle for the information that they provide. We try
to think and fine the answers to our questions by talking to ourselves, by inwardly focusing on what our
minds think of – these are signs that we are aiming to understand things by understanding what we have and
who we are.
          Understanding the self is a key to a meaningful and successful life. Self-identity is something that we
discover by way of putting our experiences together and finally deciding the kind of person we want to be. If
we do not attempt to know ourselves, how would life be and who shall we become? As Erik Erikson puts
it “In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”
What is Philosophy?
From the Greek words: “Philos” and “Sophia” meaning: Love for Wisdom
Philosophy - study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially in an academic
discipline.
- A particular theory that someone has about how to live or how to deal with a particular
situation.
PHILOSOPHY - academic discipline concerned with investigating the nature of significance of ordinary and
scientific beliefs - investigates the legitimacy of concepts by rational argument concerning their
implications, relationships as well as reality, knowledge, moral judgment, etc.
Why is it essential to understand the ancient philosophical perspectives about self?
It was the Greeks who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in attempting to understand
reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity, including the question of self.
The different perspectives and views on the self can be best seen and understood then by revisiting its prime
movers and identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers from the ancient times to the
contemporary period
The following are discussions of different perspectives and understandings of the self-according to its prime
movers. From philosophers of the ancient times to the contemporary period

Philosopher Key Concepts of the Self

 The Pre-Socratics were concerned with answering
questions such as
  What is the world really made up of?
  Why is the world the way it is?
THE PRE-SOCRATICS   What explains the changes that happen around
AKA: First Philosophers us?

(Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides,   arché- origin or source/the “soul”/the primal

Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, matter
Democritus)   the soul’s movement is the ultimate arché of all
other movement
  arché has no origin outside itself and cannot be
destroyed
  explains the multiplicity of things in the world

 
  Concerned with the problem of the self
“the true task of the philosopher is to know
oneself”
 “the unexamined life is not worth living” 
Socrates
  underwent a trial for ‘corrupting the minds of the
(470BC-399BC) youth’
  Renowned Greek Teacher   succeeded made people think about who they are
  The father of Western Philosophy   ‘the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to
live but die inside’
  “every person is dualistic”
  man = body + soul
  individual = imperfect/permanent (body) +
perfect & permanent (soul)
  
  3 components to the soul/ Psyche
  Rational soul – reason & intellect to govern
affairs
  Spirited soul – emotions should be kept at bay
Plato
  Appetitive soul – base desires (food, drink,
(428/427 or 424/423-348/347 BC) sleep, sexual needs, etc.)
    when these are attained, the human person’s soul
becomes just & virtuous
 Philosophical Question: What happens to a
person whose 3 Components of the Soul are
imbalanced?
 

  The body and the soul are not two separate

elements but are one thing.
  The Soul is that which makes a person a person;
it is the essence of the self.
 3 Kinds of Soul
  The Vegetative
Aristotle
  The Sentient
(384-322 BC)
  The Rational
  The intellect that makes man become
aware/knowledgeable as well as understanding of
things around him.
  The Rational nature of the self is to lead a good,
flourishing, and fulfilling life.
  (ST.) AUGUSTINE
  ‘spirit of man’ in medieval philosophy
  following view of Plato but adds Christianity
 man is of a bifurcated nature
  part of man dwells in the world (imperfect) and
yearns to be with the Divine
  other part is capable of reaching immortality
  body – dies on earth; soul – lives eternally in
spiritual bliss with “God”
 
Philosophical Question:  DO YOU BELIEVE IN
THE CONCEPT OF THE SOUL COMING TO
HEAVEN AFTER DEATH?
Augustine & Thomas Aquinas  
  (ST) THOMAS AQUINAS
  man = matter + form
  matter (hyle) – “common stuff that makes up
everything in the universe”
  form (morphe) – “essence of a substance or
thing”; (what makes it what it is)
  the body of the human is similar to
animals/objects, but what makes a human is his
essence
  “the soul is what makes us humans”
 
Philosophical Question:  WHAT MAKES US
PEOPLE DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS?
 
   human person = body + mind
  “there is so much that we should doubt” the
process of understanding the self through
“Methodical Doubt.”
  “if something is so clear and lucid as not to be
doubted, that’s the only time one should believe.”
  the only thing one can’t doubt is existence of the
self
Rene Descartes
  “I think, therefore I am”
(March 31, 1596- February 11, 1650)
  the self = cogito (the thing that thinks) + extenza
  (extension of mind/body)
Father of MODERN PHILOSOPHY   the body is a machine attached to the mind
    it’s the mind that makes the man
  “I am a thinking thing. . . A thing that doubts,
understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses,
imagines, perceives.”
 
Philosophical Question:  DO YOU AGREE
WITH THE STATEMENTS ABOUT THE SELF
(body & soul) SO FAR? WHAT SEEMS TO BE
QUESTIONABLE IN THEIR CONJECTURES?
  
  disagrees with the all the other aforementioned
philosophers
  “one can only know what comes from the senses
& experiences” (he is an empiricist)
  “the self is not an entity beyond the physical
body”
  you know that other people are humans not
because you have seen their soul, but because you
see them, hear them, feel them etc.

David Hume  

(April 26, 1711- August 25, 1776)   “the self is nothing but a bundle of impressions
and ideas”
 
impression – basic objects of our
experience/sensation - forms the core of our
thoughts
idea – copies of impressions - not as “real” as
impressions – “feeling mo lang yun!”
self = a collection of different perceptions which
rapidly succeed each other
 self = in a perpetual flux and movement
 we want to believe that there is a unified,
coherent self, soul, mind, etc. but ~~actually~~ it
is all just a combination of experiences.

 
  agrees with HUME that everything starts with
perception/sensation of impressions
  there is a MIND that regulates these impressions
  “time, space, etc. are ideas that one cannot find
Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724- February 12, in the world, but is built in our minds
1804)
 “apparatus of the mind”
 
  the self organizes different impressions that one
gets in relation to his own existence
  we need active intelligence to synthesize all
knowledge and experience
  the self is not only personality but also the seat
of knowledge
  
  denies the internal, non-physical self
  “what truly matters is the behavior that a person
manifests in his day-to-day life.”
  looking for the self is like entering a university
Ryle and looking for the “university”
    the self is not an entity one can locate and
analyze but simply the convenient name that we
use to refer to the behaviors that we make
  “I act therefore, I Am”
  You are what you do”
 

 
  a phenomenologist who says the mind- body
bifurcation is an invalid problem
Merleau-Ponty   mind and body are inseparable
    “one’s body is his opening toward his existence
to the world”
  the living body, his thoughts, emotions, and
experiences are all one.

Module 2: Sociological Perspective of the Self

TEACHING-LEARNING ACTIVITY (LESSON PROPER):
The modern sociology of the self assumes an emerging sociological approach reflecting new emphases on
power, reflexivity and social constructionism (Callero, 2003). However, the traditional sociological
approach to the self is associated with Mead’s symbolic interactionism and the principle of reflexivity being
at the core. The sociological theories attempt to explain how social processes influence the development of
the self.
Symbolic Interactionism.
This approach was pioneered by George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) an American philosopher, sociologist,
and psychologist. Symbolic interactionism is the study of the patterns of communication, interpretation, and
adjustment between individuals. Mead conceptualizes the mind as the individual importation of the social
process. For Mead, the self and the mind are like social processes where gestures are taken in by the
individual organism and so with the collective attitudes of others and react accordingly with other organized
attitudes. Hence, the mind and the self are the products of communication process.
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach to understanding the relationship between humans and
society. The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that human action and interaction are understandable
only through the exchange of meaningful communication or symbols. In this approach, humans are
portrayed as acting, as opposed to being acted upon. The main principles of symbolic interactionism are:
Human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them
These meanings arise out of social interaction
Social action results from a fitting together of individual lines of action (meanings you assign to things can
change)
Self as reflexive process. This is the capacity to become an object to one's self, to be both subject and object.
This process is characterized by Mead as the “I” and the “me.” The “me” is the social self and the “I” is the
response to the “me.” In other words, the “I” is the response of an individual to the attitudes of others,
while the “me” is the organized set of attitudes of others which an individual assumes.   The “me” is the
accumulated understanding of the “generalized other,” i.e. how one thinks one’s group perceives oneself.
The “I” is the individual’s impulses. The “I” is self as subject; the “me” is self as object. The “I” is the
knower; the “me” is the known. The mind, or stream of thought, is the self-reflective movements of the
interaction between the “I” and the “me.” For Mead the thinking process is the internalized dialogue
between the “I” and the “me.” (Boundless.com)
 
Self as social construction.  Some reviews of the sociological self argue that the self is both a social product
and a social force (Rosenberg 1981 as cited in Callero, 2003). In the first instance, the self is examined as a
bounded, structured object referring to Mead's "me" whereas in the second instance, the self is examined as
a fluid, agentic, and creative response referring to Mead's "I." This distinction captures the core principle of
a socially constructed self that the self is a joint accomplishment, neither completely determined by the
social world nor pregiven at birth (Callero, 2003). Understood as a combination of the “I” and the “me,”
Mead’s self proves to be noticeably entwined within a sociological existence. For Mead, existence in a
community comes before individual consciousness. First one must participate in the different social
positions within society and only subsequently can one use that experience to take the perspective of others
and become self-conscious. "It is by means of reflexiveness--the turning-back of the experience of the
individual upon himself-that the whole social process is thus brought into the experience of the individuals
involved in it"(Mead, 1934 cited in Callero,2003).
 
According to symbolic interactionism, human beings and lower level animals are distinct from each other
since lower animals simply react to their environment (that is, stimulus elicits a response from them)
whereas human beings do not merely react to the environment (that is humans are able to use cognition
before responding to the stimulus). Moreover, lower level animals are unable to conceive of alternative
responses to gestures. However, humans can. Symbolic interactionism also asserts that there is no single
objective “reality”; there are only possibly various or conflicting interpretations of a particular circumstance.
Meanings are not concepts imposed in every human being; rather, meanings can be individualized through
the creative minds of humans, and individuals may influence many meanings that form their society.
Therefore, human society is a social product. Take for instance a teenager who smokes cigarette even if
confronted with the medical evidence that stresses the dangers of smoking. You may ask, why would he still
smoke considering the risks? The answer is in the interpretation of the situation that people create. Studies
find that teenagers are well informed about the risks of tobacco, but they also think that smoking is cool, that
they will be safe from harm, and that smoking projects a positive image to their peers. So, the symbolic
meaning of smoking overrides the facts regarding smoking and risk.
 
Gender, one of the few fundamental aspects of our social experience and identities can be understood
through the perspective of symbolic interactionism. This is a social construct that operates based on what we
believe to be true about people, given what they look like. We usually use socially constructed meanings or
interpretations of gender to help us choose who to interact with, how to do so, and to help us identify,
sometimes inaccurately, the meaning of a person’s words or actions.
 
An example of how symbolic interactionism plays out within the social construct of gender is expressed in
the fact that many Filipinos or most of them, believe that a man should not be crying regardless of any valid
reasons and that a woman should be the one responsible for the household chores at home. These are the
meanings attached to the symbols ‘man’ and ‘woman’ respectively.
Mead’s Stages of the Self (Shaefer, 2010)

Looking Glass self

          This approach was conceptualized by Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), an American sociologist.
The looking-glass self is a social psychological concept stating that a person’s self grows out of society’s
interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. The term refers to people shaping their identity
based on the perception of others, which leads the people to reinforce other people’s perspectives on
themselves. People shape themselves based on what other people perceive and confirm other people’s
opinion of themselves.
There are three main components of the looking-glass self:
First, we imagine how we must appear to others.
Second, we imagine the judgment of that appearance.
Finally, we develop our self through the judgments of others.
This means that our self-image is shaped by others, but only through the mediation of our own mind. There
is no way to truly know what others think of us. According to Cooley, “the mind is mental” because “the
human mind is social.” In other words, the mind’s mental ability is a direct result of human social
interaction. Humans begin to define themselves within the context of their socializations starting from their
childhood.
Dramaturgical model of self
            Dramaturgy is a concept developed by Canadian sociologist Irving Goffman, the idea that life is like
a never-ending play in which people are actors. Goffman believed that when we are born, we are thrust onto
a stage called everyday life, and that our socialization consists of learning how to play our assigned roles
from other people. We enact our roles in the company of others, who are in turn enacting their roles in
interaction with us. He believed that whatever we do, we are playing out some role on the stage of life.
During our everyday life, we spend most of our lives on the front stage, where we get to deliver our lines
and perform. Sometimes we are allowed to retreat to the back stages of life. In these private areas, we don’t
have to act. We can be our real selves. We can also practice and prepare for our return to the front stage.
 
 Impression Management
Goffman coined the term Impression Management to refer to our desire to manipulate others’ impressions of
us on the front stage (the idealized self). According to Goffman, we use various mechanisms, called Sign
Vehicles, to present ourselves to others. The most commonly employed sign vehicles are the
following: social setting, appearance, and manner of interacting

Module 3: Anthropological Perspective of the Self

TEACHING-LEARNING ACTIVITY (LESSON PROPER):
Anthropology is not just the study of how man and society evolved but profoundly interested in explaining
and understanding the holistic aspects of man’s experiences that makes man human. According to Meijl
(2008) the interest of early anthropology in a person is centered on the concept of personality and culture
emerging from Freud and Sullivan’s psychoanalysis.  Personality and culture are co-influenced, i.e. 
personality was considered to be resulting from the internalization of culture, whereas culture was regarded
as the projection of personality.
Eventually, the work of Erikson in the ‘50s on ego identity replaced the notion of personality and became a
key term in anthropology. Identity referred to a well-adjusted personality that emerges from the same, or
identical, identification of self by self and other (Erikson, 1950 as mentioned by Meijl, 2008). Hence, the
concept identity connotes sameness and stability which ran across many disciplines like sociology,
psychology, Philosophy and anthropology in its earlier stage.
1. MARCEL MAUSS – “Marcel Mauss (1938) used the concept of self (moi) but prefer the concept of
person (personne). Implicitly he focused on the notion of person as a cultural category while he seemed
to reserve the conception of self for the psychological dimension of personhood” (Meijl, 2008 p. 176).
The concept of person is basically a cultural conception of a specific community while the concept of
self was understood as a self-conscious agent that was constituted socially and psychologically.
2. BRIAN MORRIS – In the contention of Morris (1994) “the self is not an entity but a process that
orchestrates an individual’s personal experience as a result of which he or she becomes self-aware and
self-reflective about her or his place in the surrounding world. The concept of self may accordingly be
defined as an individual’s mental representation of her or his own person, as a self-representation, while
the concept of other refers to the mental representation of other persons. Indeed, the most crucial form of
interaction and exchange takes place between the self and her or his cultural environment as mediated in
social practices” (Meijl, 2008 p. 176).
In a postmodern perspective, the self is no longer considered as the source of all reflection, but it is
reduced to a mere function of social practice. The self is never unified, but increasingly disunited, while
it is never singular but always constituted in manifold manners in different domains of society (Hall,
1996). Hence, the self is currently understood as pluralist, fragmented, emergent, dialogical, relational,
inconsistent and culturally determined (Murray, 1993).

3. LEON FESTINGER – The cognitive dissonance theory by Leon Festinger (1957) hypothesized that any
person experiences the existence of dissonance between cognitive elements as uncomfortable and
therefore everyone will always try to reduce a discrepancy between conflicting cognitions and attempt to
achieve consonance, consistency and coherence. This theory contends that people attempt to preserve a
consistent and stable sense of self. 
Cognitive anthropologists refer to cognitive schemata and cultural models that are shared by members of
a society and internalized into the self. This implies that people have no choices but to accommodate
 diverging cultural identifications within a relatively stable and coherent self. In order to maintain a
cohesive whole, the self rejects or suppresses identifications that may conflict with other types of
cognitive information and self-representations (Meijl, 2008).    
4. KATHERINE EWING – Katherine Ewing’s (1990) paper ‘The Illusion of Wholeness’ tried to show
how individual selves throughout the world continuously reconstitute themselves into new selves in
response to internal and external stimuli. The self is generally not aware of these shifts in self
representation, which do not therefore thwart individual experiences of wholeness and continuity. The
shifting selves can only be observed by others, who are generally also unable to identify an overarching,
cohesive self. In Ewing’s perspective this implies that the experience of personal continuity and
wholeness by self is illusory.

Module 4: Psychological Perspective of the Self

TEACHING-LEARNING ACTIVITY (LESSON PROPER):
“You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.”
-William James
As we grow, we go through different experiences in life. These experiences with the world create the SELF.
Since the dawn of civilization, different points of view emerged regarding the self. But, with the
establishment of Psychology (the study of behavior and mental processes), the study of the self-became
more apparent. Different psychological theories were developed to explain different phenomena about the
self.
A. Humanistic Perspective
The humanistic perspective stresses a person’s capacity for personal growth, freedom to choose one’s own
destiny, and positive human qualities.
Abraham Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970)
 

For Maslow, the self is mainly concerned with satisfying its needs. In his hierarchy of needs, basic needs
(biological/physical/physiological needs) should be satisfied first before the self can hope to satisfy the
higher order needs (safety and security/belongingness/love/esteem/cognitive/aesthetic/ self-
actualization/transcendence). Some psychologists claim that there is no particular order in the gratification
of needs as long as the self seeks out to satisfy these, even partially. That is, one does not need to have a
very full stomach every time nor to be fully dressed before one can search for safety or security.
What is most important is to aim to become the “best of what one can be” (self-actualization) and move on
to mentor, coach, teach, and care for others (transcendence). The self is compared only to the self, not with
others, because each one is unique from the other. Maslow highlights how the self is proactive because
individuals take charge of their life and use their freedom to choose to fulfil their potential and be their best
version.
2. Carl Rogers (January 9, 1908 – February 4, 1987)

For Rogers, the self emerges through the individual’s experiences with the world. Rogers described the self
as the “I” or “Me” of our existence. The self is a whole, consisting of one’s self-perceptions (how attractive I
am, how well I get along with others, how good an athlete I am) and the values we attach to these
perceptions (good/bad, worthy/unworthy).
 
The self has two subsystems, the self-concept and the ideal self. The self-concept includes all those aspects
of one’s being and one’s experiences that are perceived in awareness (though not always accurate) by the
individual. Experiences that are inconsistent with the self-concept are either denied or accepted in distorted
forms. An example would be an individual who believes that he is the best in class but ends up getting the
lowest score. This individual would reason that he did not take the test seriously or that his or her classmates
cheated. The ideal self is one’s view of self as one wishes to be. It contains attributes that a person wishes he
or she has. If the self-concept and ideal self-do not match, tendency is that the self will be mal-adjusted and
will experience incongruence.
To address this maladjustment, a more positive self-concept should be achieved. This can be obtained
through three methods: unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness. Unconditional positive
regard is accepting, valuing, and being positive toward another person regardless of the person’s behavior.
However, he distinguished between unconditional positive regard directed at the individual as a person of
worth and dignity, and directed at the individual’s behavior. For example, a teacher who adopts Rogers’
view might tell a student, “I don’t like what you did to your classmates, but I accept you, value you, and care
about you as a person.”
Empathy is listening, understanding and being sensitive to others’ feelings. It is putting yourself in the shoes
of others and looking at their world from their point of view. Being genuine means being open with our
feelings and dropping our pretenses and facades.
B. Psychoanalytic Perspective
The psychoanalytic perspective focuses on the unconscious mind and how childhood experiences shape a
person.
 
Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939)
Freud is the founder of Psychoanalysis which believes
that personality is shaped by early experiences in life. He developed the Psychosexual Theory of
Development which indicates that individuals go through a series of stages of personality development, and
in every phase, we experience sex or pleasure in one part of our body. These parts are called the Erogenous
Zones and they have strong pleasure giving qualities at a certain phase of development. Freud believed that
adult personalities are defined by how we resolve the contradiction between these early sources of
gratification – the mouth, the anus, and the genitals – and the demands of reality (King, 2008). Non-
resolution of these conflicts would result to fixation which results to attachment to an earlier stage.

Stages of Psychosexual Development

 
Freud considered the Phallic Stage as a very important stage because of the Oedipus Complex. It comes
from the Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles. The tragedy tells the story of Oedipus who
unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. In male Oedipus Complex, the boy develops an extreme
desire to replace his father and enjoy the affection of the mother. But the boy realizes that his incestuous
desire might be known by his father who he thinks will punish him by cutting off his penis (castration
anxiety). To avoid this, the boy will identify with the father and strive to be like him. The intense castration
anxiety is repressed and serves as the foundation for the superego (King, 2008).
The female Oedipus Complex is more complicated because girls discover that they do not have penises and
yearn for one (penis envy). The girl develops hostility towards her mother for not bringing her into this
world without a penis. She forms an attachment towards the father, who can satisfy her wish for a penis by
giving her a baby, an object that to her has become a substitute for a penis (Feist & Feist, 2008). Though on
a much slower pace, girls end up identifying with their mother. The female Oedipus Complex was called as
Electra Complex by Carl Jung but was rejected by Freud as it did not encompass what Freud wanted to
explain.
 
Structural Model: The Provinces of the Mind
Freud’s model helps us understand the self. This model puts emphasis on the three structures of the mind:
the id, ego, and superego which according to him, shapes one’s behavior and personality. The most primitive
is the id which is mainly focused on satisfying basic physical urges and desires. The ego, which Freud called
the self, is the part which operates based on reason and deals with the demands of reality. Its duty is for
decision making which is why it is the executive branch. The id operates unconsciously while the ego
operates partly conscious and unconscious. The superego is concerned with social norms or rules or those
that are considered moral. It is also called as the moral compass or the conscience.

When conflict arises among the three structures, the way a person resolves this conflict or balances the parts
reflects the personality of that person. The ego is responsible for balancing the id and the superego. When
the ego fails and the id dominates, a person may end up doing something not acceptable which later on,
makes this person feel guilty. If the ego succeeds in taking control and compromising, gratification may be
delayed but guilt will not follow.
 
2. Erik Erikson (June 15, 1902 – May 12, 1994)
Erikson based his theory on Freud and adapted the concept of the ego. But he described the ego as a positive
force that creates a self-identity or a sense of “I” (Feist & Feist, 2008). Erikson believed that the self is
largely shaped by society. In his theory of psychosocial development, each stage has a conflict or
psychosocial crisis that helps shape the development of the ego or self-identity of a child.
Psychosocial Development in Childhood (Ciccarelli & White, 2015)
C. Cognitive Perspective
1. Jean Piaget (August 6, 1896 – September 16, 1980) Piaget focused on the cognitive aspect of the self.

He developed his theory based in the idea that children actively construct knowledge as they explore and
manipulate the world around them. They grow and their brains develop as they move through stages that are
characterized by differences in thought processing. As a child develops, he or she forms schemas (schemes)
or mental concepts that reflect his or her outer experiences.
These schemas, which are the building blocks of knowledge, are formed through the process of assimilation
or accommodation (Lefa, 2014). Assimilation is when an existing scheme is used on objects that fit that
scheme. Example would be a baby that is given a rattle. Upon holding the rattle, the baby inspects it, licks it,
sucks on it, shakes it, and throws it making him realize that it can be sucked, licked, thrown, and if it is
shaken, emits a sound. In assimilation, new information, which fits the child’s existing schema, is added to a
child’s knowledge.
Accommodation is when existing schemes are applied to objects that do not fit them. Example is when a
child is shown a picture of a four-legged animal, he would say it is a dog because he learned earlier that a
four-legged animal was called a dog. He was corrected that it was a cow, so he would now know that not all
four egged animals are a dog, it could also be a cow. In accommodation, new information does not fit the
existing schema of the child so the child has to alter his schema to fit the new information.

 
D. Moral Perspective
Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1997 – January, 1987)
Kohlberg focused on the moral aspect of the self. He developed his theory of moral development by
assessing what morality meant. In his search, he asked
children to consider certain moral dilemmas – situations in which right or wrong actions are not always
clear. Kohlberg did not focus on the answer of the children but he studied their reasoning. His most famous
story is
“Heinz Steals the Drug” or more popularly known as the Heinz Dilemma (Fleming, 2005, 2006). The story
can be seen below:
“In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.
The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make.
He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband,
Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could get together only $1000. He told the
druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said,
“No, I discovered the drug, and I am going to make money from it.” Desperate, Heinz broke into the man’s
store to steal the drug for his wife.”
Based on the responses of the children, Kohlberg developed his theory of moral development.
Kohlberg’s Levels and Stages of Morality

E. Modern Perspective
1. William James (1842 – 1910)
James’ theory of the self is described by many as modern or even post-modern. In his magnum opus,
“The Principles of Psychology (1890)”, he discussed about the nature of the self. He described the self as the
sum total of all that a man can call his. He proposed that in studying the self, all constituents must be
explored (James, 1890).
 
James described two aspects of the self that he termed the “I Self” and “Me Self”. The I Self reflects what
people see or perceive themselves doing in the physical world (e.g., recognizing that one is walking, eating,
writing), whereas the Me Self is a more subjective and psychological phenomenon, referring to individuals’
reflections about themselves (e.g. characterizing oneself as athletic, smart, cooperative). Other terms such as
self-view, self-image, self-schema, and self-concept are also used to describe the self-referent thoughts
characteristic of the self.
2. Edward Higgins (born 1946)
Higgins developed the Self-Discrepancy Theory which hypothesized two cognitive dimensions: the domains
and standpoints of the self. The domains of the self-include the actual self, ideal self, and the ought self.  The
actual self refers to an individual’s representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another)
believes you actually possess. The ideal self refers to an individual’s representation of the attributes that
someone (yourself or another) would like you, ideally, to possess. The ought self refers to the individual’s
representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you should possess.
There are two standpoints of the self: one’s own standpoint and that of the significant others. When the
standpoints of the self is combined with the domains of the self, six basic types of representation are formed:
actual/own, actual/other, ideal/own, ideal/other, ought/own, and ought/other.
 
When there is a discrepancy with each representation, negative, emotional and motivational problems occur.
For example, if the actual characteristics of a person from his or her standpoint are not consistent with the
ideal self that he or she hopes to achieve, the individual will experience negative emotions such as
dissatisfaction and disappointment (Guo & Sun, 2014).
3. Daniel Ogilvie (1850-1924)
Ogilvie proposed that among the actual self, ideal self and undesired self, the undesired self might be a more
stable anchor for assessing the real self because the undesired self is more likely to be based on lived
experiences. In contrast to the ideal self which is unknown to an individual, the undesired self encompasses
those that are already known to us. The undesired self can be assessed by tracing memories of emotionally
charged, upsetting events. In support, Ogilvie reported that there is a stronger relationship between
real/undesired discrepancies and life satisfaction than between real/ideal discrepancies and life satisfaction
(Cohen & Ogilvie, 2008).