ENGCLEWT@acs.eku.edu wrote:
> To my knowledge, William James was the first to speak of
> "the material self," "the social self," "possible selves," "the
> spiritual self," etc. This kind of segmented self construal has become
> a standard and ever-increasing way of talking in a variety of areas
> within psychology and adjacent fields (cf. Neisser and many others).
> I would be interested in any thoughts people would like to share
> on (1) the history of this kind of usage, (2) its value, (3) possible
> alternatives.
>
> (Just to make one remark as a possible conversation opener,
> such usages often do not refer to anything that could reasonably/easily
> be called a "self," as far as I can see--e.g., a recent piece of
> sociological theory that spoke of "the leisure self.")
>
> Any comments?
>
> Best wishes to all,
>
> Rick Clewett
> (Engclewt@acs.eku.edu)
Rick, and others interested:
I offer some comments on your questions regarding self construction.
First: though we would have a great deal of difficulty deciding to what
one refers when he/she (professional and person-in-the-street) refers to my
self, we should agree that whenever one (professional and
person-in-the-street) references a self, he/she immediately assembles a
construction. Agreed? (If yes, I hope to have you follow me out a bit
further. If no, then we will need to go through a set of assumptions in
order to co-construe the idea that any reference to self immediately sets
into motion a psychological process of assembling a construction.)
I will proceed as if we agree!!
If any reference to self immediately sets into motion a constructive
process, then any explanation of the constructive process, in general, also
becomes available as an explanation of self construction. (If one would
reject this assumption, then he/she would need to explain why a construction
of self would differ from a construction of any other element which we
attempt to construe.)
Again, I will proceed as if that assumption also holds.
How do we construe a construction process? I will stand by the basic
structure of Kelly's approach to explaining a constructive process.
(a) We use two-poled judgment scales, known as constructs.
(b) Constructs are organized into interrelated systems.
(c) Only certain constructs become useful in construing putative
elements.
etc., etc.
I would go a bit farther than most PCP people in supporting the claim
that every construction is built -- on the spot, millisecond by millisecond
-- in order to set up an anticipatory construction against which the flow of
input is assessed.
This latter point is particularly important in trying to build
explanations of self construction, for -- I would further claim -- it is
very difficult to separate a self construction from any and every
construction which we build. For example, even when I begin to apply all
kinds of numerical constructs in order to add a column of numbers, my self
construction is immediately implicated -- even if it comes down to becoming
impatient about arriving at a solution, because I am getting inputs from my
bladder for which I have no immediate, satisfactory anticipatory self
construction!!!
Following this line [elaborations of which are available elsewhere] I
cannot readily speak of "segmented" selves.
Using the complex person-defining construct systems which we develop,
one would be capable of constructing millions and zillions of selves. Once
again citing the grand master, something like, "There are an infinite number
of constructions which one can place on an event!"
Surely, when I have spent 7 or 8 hours trying to piece together a
complex set of studies, or the results of a statistical analysis, have
stopped for a nice dinner, and build a liesure self by which to anticipate
my self for the next several hours, I will build an anticipatory self
construction which is quite different from the one I build when I have spent
an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum and build the anticipatory self
construction I will use for the hours I will spend at a Broadway Theatre.
What would be the value of speaking of my liesure self?
Wouldn't we gain more explanatory power from asessing the person's
construct system, and attempting to lay out those interrelated parts of that
system which are applicable in the moment by moment construction of the
peron's self?
Any comments???
Jim Mancuso
--
James C. Mancuso Dept. of Psychology
15 Oakwood Place University at Albany
Delmar, NY 12054 1400 Washington Ave.
Tel: (518)439-4416 Albany, NY 12222
Mailto:mancusoj@capital.net
http://www.crisny.org/not-for-profit/soi
A website related to Italian-American Affairs
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Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
ENGCLEWT@acs.eku.edu wrote:
To my
knowledge, William James was the first to speak of
"the material self," "the social self," "possible selves," "the
spiritual self," etc. This kind of segmented self construal has
become
a standard and ever-increasing way of talking in a variety of areas
within psychology and adjacent fields (cf. Neisser and many others).
I would be interested in
any thoughts people would like to share
on (1) the history of this kind of usage, (2) its value, (3) possible
alternatives.
(Just to make one remark
as a possible conversation opener,
such usages often do not refer to anything that could reasonably/easily
be called a "self," as far as I can see--e.g., a recent piece of
sociological theory that spoke of "the leisure self.")
Any comments?
Best wishes to all,
Rick Clewett
(Engclewt@acs.eku.edu)
Rick, and others interested:
I offer some comments on your questions regarding
self construction.
First: though we would have a great deal of difficulty
deciding to what one refers when he/she (professional and person-in-the-street)
refers to my self, we should agree that whenever one (professional
and person-in-the-street) references a self, he/she immediately
assembles a construction. Agreed? (If yes, I hope to have you
follow me out a bit further. If no, then we will need to go through
a set of assumptions in order to co-construe the idea that any reference
to self immediately sets into motion a psychological process of
assembling a construction.)
I will proceed as if we agree!!
If any reference to self immediately sets
into motion a constructive process, then any explanation of the constructive
process, in general, also becomes available as an explanation of self
construction. (If one would reject this assumption, then he/she would
need to explain why a construction of self would differ from a construction
of any other element which we attempt to construe.)
Again, I will proceed as if that assumption also
holds.
How do we construe a construction process?
I will stand by the basic structure of Kelly's approach to explaining a
constructive process.
(a) We use two-poled judgment scales, known as constructs.
(b) Constructs are organized into interrelated systems.
(c) Only certain constructs become useful in construing
putative elements.
etc., etc.
I would go a bit farther than most PCP people in
supporting the claim that every construction is built -- on the spot, millisecond
by millisecond -- in order to set up an anticipatory construction against
which the flow of input is assessed.
This latter point is particularly important in trying
to build explanations of self construction, for -- I would further claim
-- it is very difficult to separate a self construction from any and every
construction which we build. For example, even when I begin to apply
all kinds of numerical constructs in order to add a column of numbers,
my self construction is immediately implicated -- even if it comes down
to becoming impatient about arriving at a solution, because I am
getting inputs from my bladder for which I have no immediate, satisfactory
anticipatory self construction!!!
Following this line [elaborations of which are available
elsewhere] I cannot readily speak of "segmented" selves.
Using the complex person-defining construct systems
which we develop, one would be capable of constructing millions and zillions
of selves. Once again citing the grand master, something like,
"There are an infinite number of constructions which one can place on an
event!"
Surely, when I have spent 7 or 8 hours trying to
piece together a complex set of studies, or the results of a statistical
analysis, have stopped for a nice dinner, and build a liesure self
by which to anticipate my self for the next several hours, I will
build an anticipatory self construction which is quite different from the
one I build when I have spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum and
build the anticipatory self construction I will use for the hours I will
spend at a Broadway Theatre.
What would be the value of speaking of my liesure
self?
Wouldn't we gain more explanatory power from
asessing the person's construct system, and attempting to lay out those
interrelated parts of that system which are applicable in the moment by
moment construction of the peron's self?
Any comments???
Jim Mancuso
--
James C. Mancuso Dept. of
Psychology
15 Oakwood Place University
at Albany
Delmar, NY 12054 1400 Washington
Ave.
Tel: (518)439-4416 Albany, NY 12222
Mailto:mancusoj@capital.net
http://www.crisny.org/not-for-profit/soi
A website related to Italian-American Affairs
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