Sensuality and Selfhood
fChapter 1
THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND
Introduction Knowledge of the self does not happen all at once. It develops over years, starting in infancy, accelerating in adolescence and reaching completion in old age. The self-concept is the basis for self-understanding. To most people, the sense of self is their anchor, their starting point for interpreting everything around them.
“Know thyself!” was the advice given by the Greek oracle at Delphi and this advice continues to echo up to the present time (Larsen and Buss, 2008). Many psychologists are interested in the self because it plays an important role in organizing a person’s experiences of the world. What a person deems important, for example are the things that are relevant to his or her self-concept. Moreover, people behave differently when they are self-involved than when they are not, so the concept of self is important for understanding how people construe their world, their experiences, and their actions. The self is a major organizing force within the person
The notion of a self makes sense in terms of everyday lives and experiences. In the evolution of the language, a rich vocabulary for talking about the self, about selfhood or personality was developed. Terms such as self-awareness, self-concept, self-conscious, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-worship, selfish, selfless are frequently use everyday. These reflect people’s general preoccupation with themselves.
Self-concept is a person’s self-understanding – their story of themselves. The self-concept has as its start in infancy, when the child makes a distinction between its body and everything else. This glimmer of self-concept goes on to develop, through repeated experiences of self-awareness, into a collection of characteristics that the child uses for self-definition, such as gender, age, and membership in a particular family. Children acquire skills and talents and start comparing themselves with others and refining their
THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND
Introduction Knowledge of the self does not happen all at once. It develops over years, starting in infancy, accelerating in adolescence and reaching completion in old age. The self-concept is the basis for self-understanding. To most people, the sense of self is their anchor, their starting point for interpreting everything around them.
“Know thyself!” was the advice given by the Greek oracle at Delphi and this advice continues to echo up to the present time (Larsen and Buss, 2008). Many psychologists are interested in the self because it plays an important role in organizing a person’s experiences of the world. What a person deems important, for example are the things that are relevant to his or her self-concept. Moreover, people behave differently when they are self-involved than when they are not, so the concept of self is important for understanding how people construe their world, their experiences, and their actions. The self is a major organizing force within the person
The notion of a self makes sense in terms of everyday lives and experiences. In the evolution of the language, a rich vocabulary for talking about the self, about selfhood or personality was developed. Terms such as self-awareness, self-concept, self-conscious, self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-worship, selfish, selfless are frequently use everyday. These reflect people’s general preoccupation with themselves.
Self-concept is a person’s self-understanding – their story of themselves. The self-concept has as its start in infancy, when the child makes a distinction between its body and everything else. This glimmer of self-concept goes on to develop, through repeated experiences of self-awareness, into a collection of characteristics that the child uses for self-definition, such as gender, age, and membership in a particular family. Children acquire skills and talents and start comparing themselves with others and refining their
References: BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR Kerima Polotan was born in Jolo, Sulu, on December 16, 1925