The Personal Self in Social Context Barriers to Authenticity

Abstract

Abstract Although this chapter appears in the section entitled “Classic Contrasts: Personal Self Versus Social Identity,” these constructs should not be considered in opposition to one another. Instead, the personal self is very much embedded within multiple social contexts. Three historical scholars, Cooley (1902), Mead (1934), and Baldwin (1897), set the conceptual stage on which the drama of the self in social interaction was enacted. For these symbolic interactionists, the self was primarily a social construction, crafted through linguistic exchanges with others. Thus, the personal self is crafted through the incorporation of attitudes that significant others appear to hold about one’s self. There has been a resurgence of interest in their formulations emphasizing how interactive processes, initially with care givers, profoundly shape the developing self. Contemporary attachment theorists (e.g., Bretherton, 1991; Cicchetti, 1990; Sroufe, 1990) emphasize how working models of self arise from an organized care-giving matrix. Cognitive developmentalists (e.g., Case, 1991), in paying homage to Baldwin, Cooley, and Mead also observe that the first sense of self is formed in the crucible of children’s interactive experiences with significant others. Those who have examined self-processes across the life span have highlighted how others continue to impact the formation of one’s self-portrait (see review by Harter, in press-b).