Self and Personality

Concept of Self :-

The Idea of Self

  • A newly born child has no idea of its self. As a child grows older, the idea of self emerges and its formation begins.
  • Parents, friends, teachers and other significant persons play a vital role in shaping a child’s ideas about self.
  • Our interaction with other people, our experiences, and the meaning we give to them, serve as the basis of our self.

Personal Identity

  • It refers to those attributes of a person that make her/him different from others.
  • When a person describes herself/himself by telling her/his:
  1. Name (I am Shweta)
  2. Qualities or characteristics (I am honest and kind)
  3. Potentialities or capabilities (I am a singer)
  4. Beliefs (I believe in destiny)

Social Identity

  • Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link her/him to a social or cultural group or are derived from it. For example, I am a Hindu.

Self

  • Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts and feelings with regard to herself or himself.
  • These experiences and ideas define the existence of an individual both at the personal and at social levels.

Self as Subject and Self as Object

  • An individual describes himself/herself either as:
  1. an entity that does something (e.g., I am a baker). In this case, the self is described as a ‘subject’ (who does something), or as;
  2. an entity on which something is done (e.g., I am one who easily gets hurt). In this case, the self is described as an ‘object’ (which gets affected).

Kinds of Self

  • There are several kinds of self. They get formed as a result of our interactions with our physical and socio-cultural environments.
  • There are two kinds of ‘self’: