Self the Concept of Self

¶ … Self The concept of self is one of the major themes of personality studies. Personality can be defined as the totality of the behavior and emotional characteristics of an individual. It covers an individual's moods, opinions, attitudes, motivations, opinions, and style of thinking, speaking, perceiving, and acting. It is these features that make people distinct and has been used to categorize individuals in different groups of personalities. Most cultures have varied theories in relation to personality most of which have been recorded through history.

A number of theorists have emerged in this field of study examples being Ernst Kretschmer, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud, all of whom presented significant observations in the early years in the 20th century. Later own other theorists such as Gordon, Allport, and Carl Rogers also became influential (Wright, 1998). However, this paper will examine the theories of concept of self as put forward by Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Rodgers.

Rodgers' concept of self Rogers formulated his concept of self by challenging the Christian traditional concept of person. Rogers states that: the Protestant Christian tradition has permeated our culture with the concept that man is basically sinful, and only by something approaching a miracle can his sinful nature be negated (Rogers, 1961). This critical attitude has created a very pietistic approach toward the self and its actualization.

He argues that the self can be identified only by those dispositions which are deeply natural to human beings, the one whose target is "self-actualization," such as the tendencies toward autonomy, integration, and positive self-regard (Roberts, 1985). According to Rogers, a person is viewed as a separate individual who has the potential to grow and to actualize his/her potential. Rogers elaborates this point by stating that: It is an "organismic process" by which the client moves toward true satisfaction in the shifting and sorting of all the necessary data.

In choosing what course of action to take in a situation, many people rely on guiding principles, upon a code of action laid down by some group or institution, upon the judgment of others, or upon the way they have behaved in some similar past situation. Yet as I observe the clients whose experiences in living have taught me so much.

I find that increasingly such individuals are able to trust their total organismic reaction to a new situation, because they discover to an ever-increasing degree that if they are open to their experience, doing what "feels right" proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying (Rogers, 1961). In his response to Paul Tillich's criticism on Rogers' characteristics of self, Rogers clarified his positive approach toward the self saying, "I think that simply because man is an organism he tends to be directional.

He is moving in the direction of actualizing himself." (Tillich & Rogers, 1968). Rogers demonstrates a naive trust in a person's ability to actualize himself/herself. Also he asserts that, "If I can create a climate with the utmost freedom for he other individual, I can really trust the directions that he will move" (Tillich & Rogers, 1968). Rogers concludes that, "the innermost core of man's nature is positive" (Rogers, 1961). It aims to fulfill and gratify inner personal longings for identity and meaning.

Rogers' theory assumes that organisms have the tendency to actualize, maintain, and enhance their ability for self-control. This is a kind of a Neo-Pietism in psychology. Rogers' approach to the self, Geller identified it as a reflection of the Cartesian view of the self which has the following features: the self exists prior to and independent of the social process; the content of self is private; and the individual knows itself and the contents of its own mind before it knows other selves and minds.

He further criticizes that, "this Cartesian view of the self naturally leads to radical skepticism in which the only thing the self can know with certainty is the contents of its own mind" (Geller, 1984). It leads to a dilemma of the social existence of the self. This Cartesian view of the self cannot explain how social existence arises. It encourages people to become more independent and leads to an illusion that they can control themselves if they actualize themselves. People believed that they could live on an island.

The self is complete once it attains the ability to actualize itself. Rogers shares the assumption that there is a value which constitutes the highest end or purpose of human life. The human self lacks an intrinsic urge or tendency and must acquire this desire through 'insight'. This end is understood as the purpose or telos of human life, which constitutes the deepest and fullest expression of one's humanness and offers the self its most lasting fulfillment (Geller, 1984).

When people have this goal or at least attempt to attain this goal, they are automatically happy. Overall, Rogers displays a sense of overconfidence in one's ability to achieve self-fulfillment. Jung's concept of self A common quote by Jung is: As an empirical concept, the self designates the whole range of psychic phenomena in man. It expresses the unity of the personality as a whole. ..

It is a transcendental concept, for it presupposes the existence of unconscious factors on empirical grounds and thus characterizes an entity that can be described only in part, but for the other part, remains at present unknowable and illimitable (Jung, 1971a). The above quote suggests that people have developed a wider sense of self that is transcendental for it is currently incomprehensible and unlimited. Is this sensible? As people build up and individuate the psychic functions they pull more of the unconscious forces of life into the sphere of realization.

This expands the individual's sense of self. Does that expansion have limits? The existence of every individual is an essential part of the development of consciousness on this planet and in the universe. Most of the chemical elements in the human body were created in stars that exploded eons ago. Human beings could not exist devoid of the history of those stars. Any boundaries drawn around the self are capricious and people need a restricted sense of self for practical reasons.

Consciousness exists exclusively in the particular except it also only exists in the wider context of a developing universe. From the constricted ego of "me now" to the all inclusive spiritual development of consciousness is a cosmic array of possible selves. They are all applicable but limited views of reality. Jung viewed the mandalas fashioned by every culture as a figurative representation of the self.

Their basic design is the presentiment of a hub of personality, a type of central point inside the psyche to which everything is associated, by which everything is organized, and which itself is a supply of energy. The energy of the central point is evident in the almost overpowering pressure and urge to become what one is, similar to the manner in which every organism is driven to assume the form that is typical of its nature, regardless of the circumstances.

This center is not considered or thought of as the ego but, if one may so convey it, as the self. Though the center is symbolized by an inmost point, it is surrounded by a border containing everything that fits in to the self, the corresponding opposites that make up the entire personality. This entirety consists of consciousness first of all, then the individual unconscious, and lastly an ad infinitum large section of the collective unconscious whose archetypes are familiar to all mankind.

A particular number of these, nonetheless, are permanently or temporarily included in the range of the personality and, through this contact, obtain an individual stamp as the shadow, anima and animus, to mention only the preeminently familiar figures. The self however on the one hand uncomplicated, is on the other hand, a very complex thing, a "conglomerate soul," if I may borrow from the Indian expression (Jung, 1971b). The human psyche in bodies and brains of human beings is the most multifaceted structure in the known universe.

People are at the original stages of obtaining the tools that will make it achievable to gain a thorough scientific understanding of the psyche. In the nonexistence of the necessary tools the natural intuition is to try to fit the enormous complexity of the psyche into an excessively narrow intellectual model. Two of Jung's generation, Freud and Adler, constructed such models.

Jung was goaded to write Psychological Types (Jung, 1971a) by the restricted truth he saw in both of their points-of-view and the wider terrain he had observed in working with patients and via introspection. The cost incurred for such a wide view is lack of exactitude and rigor. Jung's work is largely spontaneous; it is at best loosely correct and sure enough often precisely off beam. In developing a strangely flexible psyche it was necessary to evolve an equally supple system of motivation or emotions.

Without the suppleness of motivation the suppleness of the psyche itself would never be used. The key to flexibility of motivation is intrinsically conflicting motivational structures. The self as defined by Jung is the core or central component that keeps these opposing forces operating as an integrated whole. To what closing stages does this process manage? It was formed by evolution and so survival is the architect but it is survival not just of the next generation but into an unclear future.

The self as described by Jung is the psychic image of this limitless potential for prospect development. For itself it focuses on the various dimensions of human functioning that put in to survival including ingenuity in all its forms. Sensing the self as something irrational, as an impalpable existent, to which the ego is neither opposed nor subject, but simply attached, and about which it spins very much as the earth does round the sun, accordingly the goal of individuation is reached.

The word "sensing" is used to indicate the apperceptive nature of the relationship between ego and self. In this connection nothing is knowable, since nothing can be said about the contents of the self. The ego is the only content of the self that is known by people. The individuated ego senses itself as the object of an unidentified and supraordinate subject.

It seems that our psychological inquiry must come to a stop here, for the thought of a self is itself a transcendental postulate which, although justified psychologically, does not give chance for scientific proof. This step further than science is an unconditional prerequisite of the psychological development because without this postulate no adequate formulation of the psychic processes that occur empirically can be given. At the very least, consequently, the self can claim the value of a hypothesis comparable to that of the structure of the atom.

The self is transcendent since it points to a limitless future and unrestrained creative expansion of the evolutionary process; this is something that cannot be comprehend by any being. Evidently we can have some sense of the future structure of the evolutionary process, but that tells us nothing of its real meaning, it tells us nothing of what it is like to be a more exceedingly evolved being.

Is it reasonable that such a psychic structure would evolve and if so how can we agree to Jung's claim that this structure does not "give chance for scientific proof"? The key to this puzzle may lie in the earlier mentioned intuition of Jung that number is the archetypal intermediary between the physical and the transcendent. The function that number plays in mythology and in the unconscious gives food for thought. They are a facet of the physically real as well of the psychically imaginary.

They do not merely count and measure, and are not only quantitative; they as well make qualitative statements and are thus a mysterious something midway between myth and reality, partly discovered and partly invented. Equations, for example, that were invented as pure mathematical formulae have consequently proved to be formulations of the quantitative behavior of physical things. On the other hand owing to their individual qualities, numbers can be vehicles for psychic processes in the unconscious. The structure of the mandala, for example, is intrinsically mathematical.

These hints are simply intended to point out to the reader that the conflict between the human world and the higher world is not supreme; the two are only relatively incommensurable, for the bridge between them is not completely lacking. Between them stands the great mediator, number, whose veracity is valid in both worlds, as an archetype in its very essence (Jung, 1970). Mathematics allows individuals to gain some understanding of the progression of structure over time by connecting with the transcendent.

People can know about structural aspects of what will be although structures of the psyche that have developed to facilitate human creativity do not have a precise or scientifically understandable goal because if they did they would not be creative. One thing to keep in mind in interpreting Jung's intuitions about Number is that he did not understand mathematics at all. Maybe Jung's intuitive sense that structure never captures or even touches on real meaning underlies his trouble with mathematics.

Mathematical identity is structural identity but mathematical identity is not existential identity. In the physical world every object has a location and notwithstanding the fact that two objects at different locations have identical internal structure their affiliation to time and space keep them from being identical, they are two essences and not one. Perhaps Jung's scholarly morality would not allow the simulated separation of structure and essence that is at the core of present-day mathematics and science.

That disjointing is an artificial game that is necessary in the hard sciences that have become solely mathematical. He surely could have learned to play the game; perhaps he would have been contented to do so if he understood it in these terms. But he was living at a time, as we still are today, when the discoveries of science about physical structure are all too often taken as the primary or ultimate reality.

The problem with that is that science and mathematics deal only with structure and viewing structure as ultimate reality leads to a dead and meaningless universe. For Jung the universe is brimming with significance. FREUD'S CONCEPT OF SELF Freud states that when the need of the idealized self, also known as the superego, and the impulsive self, also known as the id, overcome the rational self, also known as the ego, anxiety results.

In the words of Freud, one way for the rational self (ego) to provisionally reduce this anxiety is to alter ones thoughts and discernment of reality. These discernments can help one maintain an integrated self while looking for a realistic and satisfactory solution for the clash between the superego and id that generates anxiety, this might also be thought of in terms of humanist theory when ones experiences are inconsistent with their self-concept.

The use of defense mechanisms is very frequent and many psychologically healthy individuals momentarily use defense mechanisms to deal with stressful events (Cavell, 1993). However, when defense mechanism holdup continually alters "reality" or interferes with one's use of more constructive coping strategies, they can be counterproductive and keep people from learning from experience. Why? There are a number of defense mechanisms put forward by Freud which include mechanisms such as repression, displacement, sublimation, rationalization, projection, reaction formation, denial, undoing, and regression.

In repression the individual pushes back unacceptable or unpleasant impulses into the.