Introduction to Symposium on Constructing Self with Others

Abstract

The notion that the self is interpersonally embedded can be found throughout psychology's history. This article presents convergent work from different areas of contemporary psychology that supports and elaborates this notion. M. Baldwin's (1997) experimental work in social cognition demonstrates that self-evaluation varies with the relational schema that is activated. C. R. Snyder and R. L. Higgins (1997) present a social–cognitive personality theory of how people maintain their self theories to satisfy internal and external audiences. S. J. Blatt, J. S. Auerbach, and K. N. Levy's (1997) object-relations theory of the role of mental representations of self and others in psychopathology is supported by research that changes in these representations are associated with improvement in psychotherapy. J. Martin and J. Sugarman's (1997) social–cognitive theory of counseling and psychotherapy as conversational reconstructions of self theories also has research support and raises the issue of whether the self is agentic if socially constructed.