The concepts of self and self-concept

The concept of the self is quite philosophical – what does it mean to be a unique individual? What does it mean to have a personality, sense of worth and identity that is completely your own? No one has memories like you do and no one sees things in exactly the same way as you do; this is why the ‘individual differences’ that are shown by everyone have always been a fascinating topic for psychological research.

Psychologists believe that our ‘self’ is inside us – our inner being or who, exactly, we think we are. We often refer to things that are ‘self’ related and this indicates that we are unique people whose individual thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions and language are different to everyone else. Consider how many ‘self’ words we say regularly, and whilst each has a specific meaning, this changes when it is described in terms of every person who says it:

• Self-esteem: might be good or bad, might be influenced by parents or peers
• Self-confidence: might be high or low, might be influenced by playing sport or by doing well in school
• Self-conscious: might be very high, where someone has no fear of losing or might be very low where someone never tries new things
• Self-sufficient: might mean that a 14-year-old is very capable of making themselves a healthy meal or might mean that an adult cannot work out how to use the washing machine!

Researchers have attempted to identify what is meant by ‘the self’ and what factors combine to make this unique to each individual person. It is argued that to be aware of yourself means that you have a concept of yourself, and several theories of the ‘self’ exist.

Lewis (1990) argued that self-concept is a vital aspect for a person to understand who they are and proposed that the development of self-concept has two key aspects:

• The existential self
• The categorical self

The existential self

This part of the self develops at a very young age and refers to how people realise that they are separate and distinct from others and that they continue to exist through time and space.

Lewis believes that the existential self begins to develop before the age of six months and comes about in reaction to the child’s interactions with their world. For example, the child learns about other people’s reactions, e.g. an adult smiles when they smile, and what objects do when they are touched, e.g. a toy train moves when it is pushed.

The categorical self

Once the child has realised that they are separate from others, they also realise that they too are an object which exists in the world. Realisation of this means that they start to appreciate that they have ‘properties’ just like other objects do. The ‘self’ can be categorised, such as being, male, female, tall, short, five years old or two years old. In fact, gender and age are one of the first categories in which a young child is able to place themselves.

In early childhood, the categories in which children place themselves are very fixed but these become more flexible as they grow up. By the time the child is a teenager, they are able to categorise internal psychological traits, how other people see them and compare and evaluate how they are with others. For example, they might think that they are intelligent compared to someone but short compared to someone else.