Different Conceptions Of Self Research Articles

Reading aloud: The role of the reader and the conception of ‘self’

In this article I examine the prosody associated with different ways of reading aloud, in particular the speaker’s exploitation of pitch range, and I consider the way in which different styles project different speaking roles and with them different conceptions of self. I have chosen four different speaking styles: storytelling, newsreading, prayer and poetry-reading. They represent different degrees of markedness and are the styles that are referenced most frequently in a wide range of sources, allowing a comparison and synthesis of the different characterizations they contain. The sources from which I draw my evidence include impressionistic descriptions of ‘delivery’ in classical writings on rhetoric, and instructions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century manuals for recitation, public speaking and elocution training. All these accounts are aimed at improving the performance of individual speakers, but I also draw on more recent studies of intonation, which are motivated largely by potential applications in speech technology – speech recognition and speech synthesis. They combine qualitative and quantitative accounts based on acoustic analysis and include, for example, research on intonation and emotion and on the prosodic parameters of charismatic speech. Stylistic variation has traditionally been understood as variation according to situational context or setting, as is evident in the choice of styles for this article. An alternative view discussed here is Goffman’s notion of ‘participant roles’, important in socio-pragmatics, which relates ways of speaking to whether the speaker is acting for themselves or, for example, as a spokesperson, as in reading the news. Finally, in order to account for the overlap of prosodic features in ostensibly very different settings, such as poetry-reading and liturgy, I propose a unifying factor underlying the different styles, based on degrees of subjectivity and objectivity in the voice. I conclude that speakers respond not to a physical setting but to the kind of ‘self’ they wish to project.

Images of Self in Psychological Thought

The concept of self is a multi-faceted one that is used by different theorists in different ways. In this paper, we present an overview of the dominant themes and images that structure conceptions of self as used by psychologists, sociologists, philosophers and other scholars. In order for concepts like self and identity to be meaningful, it is necessary that we compare and clarify their various uses, identify the different aspects of experience that they are intended to illuminate, and seek to consolidate them in ways that are coherent and integrative. In this paper, we identify four broad models of self in psychology: self as inner life, social conceptions of identity, relational conceptions of self and conceptions of self based on group identifications. We offer this typology as an initial framework for coordinating different conceptions of self and identity.

Zhuangzi and Wittgenstein on the Self

We criticize an approach to culture theory requiring us to start investigations from presuming different conceptions of crucial terms in historical sources such as self, rather than from relying on an uncontroversial sense understood in all civilizations. We argue that we can understand the differences between concepts in different civilizations better by first clarifying the commonalities that are given in the uncontroversial sense. For our claim we use Zhuangzi as an example that shows the advantages of our approach, not least by demonstrating that many of the traditional oppositions between the Chinese and the Western civilization cannot be confirmed. Hence, our approach, though starting from commonalities between civilizations, is strong at uncovering prejudice. The perhaps uncontroversial starting point of the investigation of self is that different cultural experiences have produced importantly different conceptions of self and that these different conceptions of self need to be factored into any responsible evaluation of contemporary issues and problems. (Ames 1994, vii-ix, vii)

Brain imaging of the self – Conceptual, anatomical and methodological issues

In this paper we consider two major issues: conceptual-experimental approaches to the self, and the neuroanatomical substrate of the self. We distinguish content- and processed-based concepts of the self that entail different experimental strategies, and anatomically, we investigate the concept of midline structures in further detail and present a novel view on the anatomy of an integrated subcortical-cortical midline system. Presenting meta-analytic evidence, we show that the anterior paralimbic, e.g. midline, regions do indeed seem to be specific for self-specific stimuli. We conclude that future investigation of the self need to develop novel concepts that are more empirically plausible than those currently in use. Different concepts of self will require novel experimental designs that include, for example, the brain's resting state activity as an independent variable. Modifications of both conceptual and anatomical dimensions will allow an empirically more plausible account of the relationship between brain and self.

Conceptions of Self and the Impact of Loss Reply to Commentaries

The author makes use of Glennon's and Cole's discussions to elaborate the relationship between our conceptions of self and the ways in which we understand the experience of loss. In discussing the intrapsychic self, the self as it is constituted through the process of relating and the existential self, he argues that when we make room for multiplicity and the complex, dynamic interplay of diverse self states and modes of experiencing, these different conceptions of self both enhance and complement our experience of loss.

CONCEPTIONS OF SELF/NO‐SELF AND MODES OF CONNECTION Comparative Soteriological Structures in Classical Chinese Thought

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the ways that the terms “self” and “no‐self” can illuminate the views of classical Chinese thinkers, particularly Confucians such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, and the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. In particular, the use of the term “no‐self ” to describe Zhuangzi's position is defended. The concepts of self and no‐self are analyzed in relation to other terms within the thinkers' “concept clusters”—specifically temporality, nature, and social roles—and suggestions are given for constructing typologies that sort out the range of meanings of self and no‐self based on the characteristics of the relations among terms within the concept clusters. The essay focuses on the way that the Confucians and Zhuangzi use concepts of self and no‐self, respectively, as soteriological strategies that aim at making connections with larger systems or wholes, and it concludes that different connections are emphasized by the Confucians and Zhuangzi precisely because the various connections are made possible and sustained by different conceptions of self, temporality, nature, and social roles.

A Buddhist contribution to the psychoanalytic psychology of self

The author attempts to integrate the concepts of self used in psychoanalytic theory with the understanding of the nature of self as explained within the Buddhist meditative tradition. He divides different concepts of self in psychoanalytic theory into three major levels of consciousness and abstraction: self as experience, representational self and self as system. The representational level is defined as consisting of unconscious organizing structures of interaction: the system level is a hierarchically higher organization of representations, while the experiential level consists of the moment‐to‐moment flow of consciousness. He argues that for the sake of theoretical clarity these levels should be differentiated in discussions of self. He then describes the Buddhist psychology of self and tries to show how this perspective can enrich psychoanalytic understanding of the experiential self and of narcissism, which in Buddhist language would be described as clinging to (seeking or avoiding) images of self that arise in the mind. Last, he describes a model of therapeutic development using different levels of self and the interrelationship between them, showing how psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Buddhist insight meditation emphasize different levels of self using complementary rather than mutually exclusive methods.

A Buddhist contribution to the psychoanalytic psychology of self.

The author attempts to integrate the concepts of self used in psychoanalytic theory with the understanding of the nature of self as explained within the Buddhist meditative tradition. He divides different concepts of self in psychoanalytic theory into three major levels of consciousness and abstraction: self as experience, representational self and self as system. The representational level is defined as consisting of unconscious organizing structures of interaction: the system level is a hierarchically higher organization of representations, while the experiential level consists of the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. He argues that for the sake of theoretical clarity these levels should be differentiated in discussions of self. He then describes the Buddhist psychology of self and tries to show how this perspective can enrich psychoanalytic understanding of the experiential self and of narcissism, which in Buddhist language would be described as clinging to (seeking or avoiding) images of self that arise in the mind. Last, he describes a model of therapeutic development using different levels of self and the interrelationship between them, showing how psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Buddhist insight meditation emphasize different levels of self using complementary rather than mutually exclusive methods.

Becoming a Mature Student: Gendered narratives of the self

This article explores some of the processes of personal and social transformation involved in becoming a mature student, through the construction of four narratives derived from the biographical accounts of 21 students entering higher education. The authors identify different conceptions of self in the four narratives and demonstrate their gendered nature. In particular they highlight the specifically masculine nature of the 'reflexive self', in contrast to the gender-neutral treatment of this concept in the literature. They also draw attention to the connections between these gendered concepts of self and the meanings of education, which they suggest are more complex than the simple gender dichotomies expressed in the literature. In addition they show that an analytic approach derived from narrative analysis can offer more insights into the interpretation of biographical data than more traditional ethnographic methods.

Narrative, Memory, and the Self in Southwestern New Britain

In philosophy and classics, in literary criticism, in history, and in anthropology, particular narrative styles have been thought to reveal different concepts of self. Autobiographical narrative understood as a "recovery of lost time"—as a retrospective joining of the past incidents of a life in order to assign life a patterned or thematic meaning—has seemed an expressive form particularly suited to convey a unitary notion of the self. Both autobiography and the unitary concept of self have been viewed as consummately Western culture forms. This essay questions classifications that posit a vast divide between the nature of Western and non‐Western concepts of self, and thus between the character of Western and non‐Western life stories. As it shows how New Britainers use different narrative forms to come to terms with different types of experience, it reveals how the manifold structures of the Melanesian self are continually rearticulated in discourse. The essay is primarily about the phenomenology of memory in Melanesia; it is about the constitutive role that memory plays in the establishment of identity.

Conceptions of self within China and the United States: Contrasting foundations for adult education

Cultural, social, political, and psychological influences are shown to result in different conceptions of self within China and the United States. The Chinese construction of self emphasizes continuity of family, societal roles, the supremacy of hierarchical relationships, compliance with authority, and the maintenance of stability. Identity is, largely, externally ascribed, subordinated to the collective, and seeks fulfillment through performance of duty, ordained roles, and patterns of filial loyalty. Within the United States the individual is recognized as the starting point for construing the social order, and the self is considered a psychological construct as much as an artifact of cultural, social, and political influences. These differences are shown to provide different foundations for thinking about the provision of education for adults.

Modernism, the New Criticism and Thomas Pynchon's "V"

As an example of a postmodernist text that resonates with echoes of modernist writers of first half of this century, Thomas Pynchon's V. offers an excellent site for an analysis of shift from modernism to postmodernism. It is a shift that manifests itself in an altered view of nature of art, but also in emergence of different conceptions of self and of history. A few years ago Pynchon offered some reflections on his early work that help to situate it in context of literary and cultural changes that were taking place in United States during post-war period. In Introduction to Slow Learner, a collection of his early short stories, Pynchon describes cultural mood of 1950s, when he was starting off on his literary career. He observes that there were two poles in literary culture of period, a conflict he summarizes in terms of vs. Beat fiction.' He adds that by traditional he means the more established modernist tradition we were being exposed to then in college.2 This definition suggests importance of institutional context within which Pynchon first became acquainted with modernist literature. In a narrow sense, this institutional context was provided by Cornell University, where Pynchon studied as an undergraduate. However, larger context towards which his remarks point is state of literary criticism and literary education in United States in 1950s. The most influential school of criticism at this time was New Criticism, of which leading representatives were, among others, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. In devising a critical method that proved particularly effective in classroom, New Critics had succeeded in becoming highly prominent in academy. Since work of New Critics arose largely in conjunction with and as a response to emergence of modernism in literature, their theories and presuppositions played a crucial role in shaping way in which modernism came to be understood. Many commentators have drawn attention to this nexus between New Criticism and modernism, including some of New Critics themselves. R.P. Blackmur, for example, observed that what new criticism is, essentially, is kind of formal criticism and kind of technical criticism that was best