The Unconscious Relational Self

Abstract

Abstract The notion that previous knowledge is brought to bear in extracting and constructing meaning is fundamental in social cognition. This process can be understood in terms of mental representations of self and of others that give both idiosyncratic and shared meaning to experience. The relational self, or the self one experiences in relation to another person, thus reflects the personal as well as the interpersonal. We characterize the relational self as social-cognitive and draw on personality and clinical theory in making the assumption that significant others play a critical role in both self-definition and self-regulation (Andersen & Chen, 2002). According to our model, each individual has an overall repertoire of selves, each of which stems from a relationship with a significant other. The repertoire is a repository for, and later a source of, interpersonal patterns the individual experiences. In short, each relational self is tied to a mental representation of a significant other. When activated, the representation of this significant other and the aspects of the self linked to it end up imbuing current experiences with different meaning, depending on the content of the relationship and the context in which this is evoked. People may, we assume, have nearly as many selves as they have significant interpersonal relationships (Sullivan, 1953; see also Kelly, 1955), and this provides for both contextual variability in the self and for the chronic influence of long-standing patterns.