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The ‘self may be viewed from two angles: the self as subject and the self as object. The nature of the self, as seen by oneself from inside, is something which transcends all scientific investigations. It is a mystery which language fails to describe. Every person has a consciousness of self, such consciousness finds expression in the use of the pronoun this is the subjective self.’
G.M. Mead pointed out that an essential characteristic of the self is its “reflexive character”. By this he means that the self can be both subject and object to itself. Thus, when we say “the nature of the self’, we reflect upon self and become self-conscious. We make self an object and when we do so the subjective self disappears.
In sociology we are concerned with the objective self. “The heart of socialisation”, says Kingsley Davis, “is the emergence and gradual development of the self or ego. It is in terms of the self that personality takes shape and the mind comes to function”. The objective self, therefore, becomes an object of inquiry.
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Where does this self arise? Are we born with it? Is it something the individual brings with him as he confronts society? Or, is it something that he receives from society as a gift of the confrontation? In seeking an answer to these questions, we may explore the theories developed by Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead and Sigmund Freud.
Though these three eminent scholars differ among themselves, yet all of them, having pursued the subject on the lines of their specialisation, come to the conclusion that the self is social and that self-consciousness arises only in and through interaction with others.
One of the earliest scholars to tackle this problem was C.H. Cooley. In his book, Social Organisation, he writes that “self and society are twin-born”, that “we know one as immediately as we know the other”, and further that “the notion of a separate and independent ego is an illusion”. In other words, self-consciousness can arise only in society and it is inseparable from social consciousness.
The self, in short, is social. In this connection, we may refer to Cooley’s famous “looking glass” conception of the self.
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The basic idea of this conception is as follows:
“The way we imagine ourselves to appear to another person is an essential element in our conception of ourselves. Thus, I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am”.
To Cooley, the proof of this view may be found in our experience that “we are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straight-forward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the presence of a refined one…………”. It follows, therefore, that we make a conscious attempt to show a different self in the presence of different social groups.
Two corollaries follow from this inference:
(i) That we are different in different groups, and
(ii) That we depend upon the presence of other people and group for our conception of ourselves.
Having made such a step-by-step analysis, Cooley concludes that the self is social and that it is not possible to develop self-consciousness in the absence of society.
G.H. Mead (1863-1931), the philosopher and psychologist, agreed wholeheartedly with Cooley that it is absurd to look at the self or the mind from the viewpoint of an individual organism.
Although it may have its focus in the organism, it is undoubtedly a social product and a social phenomenon. The chain of arguments which Mead advances in support of this conclusion and also in support of his theory of “Me” and “I” may be briefly summarised.
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The self arises in interaction with the social and non-social environment. The social environment is particularly important. The following example may be cited. The baby cries and mother responds by giving milk or something good.
If the mother continues to respond with care and love, the baby will eventually learn to distinguish between the state of affairs when the mother is present and the state of affairs when the mother is absent.
The mother will be ‘internalized’ as an object. Primitive symbolic communication will be established. Thus, when the baby cries it will mean “I want mother”. The mother’s behaviour will convey to him the meaning that ‘mother is pleased with me’, or that ‘mother loves me’. Here we have the beginning of the consciousness of self.
The formation of the self thus involves “taking the role of other”, seeing oneself, in imagination, as an object seen by someone else. The child, putting himself in the place of another, not only forms a concept of himself but also evaluates that concept and invests it with feeling and warmth.
Just as the child learns to develop an attitude towards objects in the environment, so he learns to take the same attitude toward himself that others take toward him. When the mother tells the child that he has done something good or bad, she is not only trying to teach the child what the words mean.
She treats the child as an object toward which she takes a certain attitude and tries to get the child to do the same. He is encouraged to take himself as an object.
He evaluates and controls himself the same way he evaluates and controls other object and he does so from the standpoint of someone else. In short, the child is taught to make appropriate responses to his own behaviour as well as to other objects in his environment.
This process is characterised by Mead in terms of the T and the ‘Me’— the ‘Me’ being that group of organised attitudes to which the individual responds as an T. He called the acting self the T. The ‘Me’, on the other hand, is that part of the self which consists of the internalized attitudes of others.
The following illustration given by Mead will be instructive:
“Consider a politician or a statesman putting through some project in which he has the attitude of the community in himself. He knows how the community reacts to this, proposal. He reacts to this expression of the community in his own experience—he feels with it. He has a set of organised attitudes which are those of the community. His own contribution, the ‘I’ in this case, is a project of re-organisation, a project which he brings forward to the community as it is reflected in himself. He himself changes, of course, in so far as he brings this project forward and makes it a political issue. There has now arisen a new social situation as a result of the project which he is presenting. The whole procedure takes place in his own experience as well as in the general experience of the community. He is successful to the degree that the final ‘me’ reflects the attitude of all the community”.
If Mead used two components of the ‘self’, ‘I’ and ‘Me’, Freud used three, the id, the ego and the super ego. The id represents our appetites, those inborn drives that prompt us to act, the impulse to do what we want to do. It seeks pleasure and avoids pain, reminiscent of the famous saying of Jeremy Bentham that “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters. Pain and Pleasure”.
We are not, however, permitted to do what we want to do. As social beings, we are obliged to adjust our desires and impulses, so that no social disharmony takes place. The second mechanism of the mind, the ego, helps us to do this.
It mediates between the natural impulses of the id and the demands of the society in which we live. The ego thus acts as the manager of the self and facilitates the adjustment of the individual to society.
Apart from social restraint, there is another restraint upon the unfettered play of the impulses. This is the moral restraint. The third mechanism of the mind, the super-ego tells us what is morally right and what is morally wrong. It tells us what ought to be done and what ought to be avoided. The super-ego imposes the moral imperatives of society.
If we take the three components of mind together, it appears that the id and the superego stand in two opposite poles. Complications may develop as a result of such opposition. It is understandable that all our impulses cannot be satisfied in the social context.
At the same time, all our impulses cannot be restrained either without doing harm to emotional stability of the individual. It is the task of the ego, the manager of the self, to act as an umpire in the perennial conflict between the in-born impulses and drives on the one hand and the ‘thousand tongues’ of conscience on the other.
The conflict, referred to above, is an internal conflict, the ‘Self in conflict with itself. Consciousness of ‘self’ arises out of this conflict. “It is in the repression of impulse that we become conscious of the fact that there is something else in the universe than ourselves, and it is this consciousness that gives us also the sense of self”.
We have considered the views of three scholars who belong to three distinct disciplines. In spite of their different intellectual orientations, however, they arrive at a conception of the ‘self’ that requires society.