Self Concept

training-induced change in the emotional content of the self-concept was only found after participants underwent the Perspective Module… solely the Perspective Module … was effective in inducing changes in the emotional content of the self-concept.

Empirical data from the ReSource Project demonstrate that only IFS-based perspective-taking practice—not mindfulness or compassion training—produces meaningful shifts in the emotional content of the self-concept, positioning part-identification work as uniquely transformative.

Schwartz, Richard C, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 1995thesis

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The fiction of the self, paralleling the Buddhist idea, is that you have some enduring essence that makes you who you are. You do not. I speculate that your self is constructed anew in every moment by the same predictive, core systems that construct emotions.

Barrett argues that the self is not a stable essence but a moment-to-moment predictive construction generated by the same neural networks responsible for emotion, rendering the self concept a dynamic and revisable product of the conceptual system.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis

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Jung's idea of the self is different from ordinary feelings of selfhood or the psychoanalytic concept of personal identity; these important qualities Jung locates in the ego. The idea of a centre, of having a centre, of being motivated or regulated by a centre, may be the most accurate description of what is involved in a feeling of wholeness.

Samuels clarifies that Jung's self concept transcends ordinary personal identity—which belongs to the ego—and is better understood as the regulatory centre that organises personality toward wholeness.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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Fordham (1963) felt that Jung developed two incompatible theories of the self. If the self means (a) the whole personality, he asserts, then it can never be experienced because the ego, as the agency of experiencing, is 'in' the totality.

Fordham's critique identifies a structural contradiction in Jung's self concept—totality and central archetype are mutually exclusive definitions—a tension that has driven major post-Jungian revisionary work.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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The neural basis for the self, as I see it, resides with the continuous reactivation of at least two sets of representations. One set concerns representations of key events in an individual's autobiography, on the basis of which a notion of identity can be reconstructed repeatedly.

Damasio grounds the self concept neurobiologically in the continuous reactivation of autobiographical and dispositional representations, replacing metaphysical selfhood with a perpetually reconstructed neurobiological state.

Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994thesis

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The self is not the infamous homunculus, a little person inside our brain perceiving and thinking about the images the brain forms. It is, rather, a perpetually re-created neurobiological state.

Damasio dispels the homuncular fallacy and reconceptualises the self as a dynamic, continually reconstructed neurobiological process rather than a fixed interior agent.

Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994thesis

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we come to construct or invent, on a continuing basis, in ourselves and in others, a self. The advantage of an idea of your self is to help you know what you can or can't do or should or should not do.

Jaynes situates the self concept as a conscious construction that post-dates bicameral identity, arguing it is a historically emergent cognitive tool whose primary function is behavioural self-guidance under the conditions of conscious life.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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When you realize that you're not the insecure selfish parts that you've identified with for so long, but instead that you're this Self that's curious, calm, confident, compassionate, creative, clear, courageous, joyful, generous, and playful—and that your essence is connected to some kind of larger universal principle—you feel happy.

Schwartz contrasts the Self with the protective parts clients habitually identify with, asserting an intrinsic Self characterised by specific qualities that connect individual psychology to a transpersonal dimension.

Schwartz, Richard C, No Bad Parts, 2021thesis

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individuation as 'coming to selfhood' or 'self-realization'… This centre of personality no longer coincides with the ego, but with a point midway between the conscious and the unconscious. This would be the point of a new equilibrium, a new centering of the total personality, a virtual centre.

Papadopoulos traces Jung's developmental understanding of the self concept as a virtual centre achieved through individuation, distinct from ego-consciousness and located at the intersection of conscious and unconscious.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

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Kohut is on record as saying that 'the self is the centre of the individual's psychological universe' and that it is a centre for initiative… The self as the centre of the individual's psychological universe, is, like all reality … not knowable in essence.

Samuels documents Kohut's self concept as psychological centre and locus of initiative, noting its epistemic limits and the surprising convergence—and divergence—with the Jungian position.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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One recent development in psycho-analysis has been the increasing use of the concept of the False Self. This concept carries with it the idea of a True Self.

Winnicott introduces the True/False Self distinction as a developmental self concept, linking self-formation to early relational and environmental conditions and establishing a polarity that has become canonical in relational psychotherapy.

Winnicott, Donald, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, 1965supporting

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The self would consist of the primordial feeling that the protoself, in its native state, spontaneously and relentlessly delivers, instant after instant. When it comes to the complex mental lives that both you and I are experiencing at this very moment, however, protoself and primordial feeling are not enough to account for the self phenomenon.

Damasio argues that while the protoself generates a primordial feeling that anchors the self concept, it remains insufficient to explain the full complexity of autobiographical selfhood, necessitating additional layers of neural self-process.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010supporting

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The Core Self State… when a perceived object precipitates an emotional reaction and alters the master interoceptive maps, a modification of the protoself ensues, thus altering the primordial feelings.

Damasio details how the core self emerges from object-triggered modifications of interoceptive maps, providing a mechanistic account of how the self concept is continuously updated through affective transactions with the environment.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010supporting

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Willeford (1987) maintains a view of the self as neither fixed nor stable and manifesting itself in disorganisation as much as organisation. Redfearn (1985) has also paid detailed attention to shifts in the 'I'-feeling between different parts of the personality, the 'many selves'.

Post-Jungian analysts challenge the monolithic self concept, proposing instead a plural, shifting model of selfhood in which disorganisation and multiplicity are as constitutive as integration.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

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Real self… alienation from, 11, 21, 257, 271; and central inner conflicts, 112; definition of, 158, 173; development of, 17… and idealized self, 155; and pride system, 112; and self-hate, 112, 368; and theory of neurosis, 368.

Horney's index entries reveal the centrality of the real-self concept to her theory of neurosis, mapping a structural tension between the real self and the idealised self that generates self-alienation, self-hate, and the entire pride system.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting

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the Self we find in IFS encompasses a strange and wonderful duality. In the Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model (2001), I (RS) elaborated on the dual nature of the Self as either an active inner leader or an expansive, boundaryless state of mind.

Schwartz articulates the IFS self concept as irreducibly dual—simultaneously a practical inner leader and a boundaryless transpersonal state—linking it to Csikszentmihalyi's flow and Buddhist mindfulness.

Schwartz, Richard C, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 1995supporting

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This paper compares presentations of disorders of the sense of body ownership and agency from psychoanalytic and neurological perspectives to demonstrate similarities in symptomatology proposing these similarities arise from adjustments in Friston's generative model of self-organization and selfhood.

Mizen proposes that both neurological and psychogenic disorders of selfhood share a common mechanism in the disruption of Friston's predictive self-model, forging a bridge between analytic and computational accounts of the self concept.

Mizen, C. Susan, The Self and alien self in psyche and somasupporting

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Samsara is the confusion and suffering that results from not recognizing our true nature, but instead basing our life on the fiction of the constructed self, imagining that our thoughts about who we are represent reality.

Welwood introduces a Buddhist-psychological critique of the constructed self concept, identifying reification of one's self-narrative as the root mechanism of samsaric suffering and psychological delusion.

Welwood, John, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000supporting

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Identity integration signifies states of 'breathing across' other domains of integration—something that feels akin to an 'integration of integration.' This form of integration involves a person's sense of coming to feel connected to a larger whole.

Siegel positions identity integration as a meta-level self concept that synthesises all other domains of neural and relational integration, culminating in a sense of belonging to a larger whole.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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if you assume that this whole continent in which your little kingdom is to be found is ruled by a central power, then that central power would be your own king also; you would be a subject of that unknown grand power. And that would be the self, about as we think of it in psychology.

Jung employs a geopolitical metaphor to convey the self as a governing central power that exceeds and encompasses ego-consciousness, connecting this concept to his early engagement with Nietzsche's Zarathustra.

Jung, C.G., Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting

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the brain's DMN consists of discrete, bilateral and symmetrical cortical areas… It has been showed that the DMN is characterized by high intrinsic activity during resting states… that decreases when subjects engage in goal-directed tasks.

Alcaro links the Default Mode Network's resting-state self-referential activity to the neural substrate of self-concept formation, situating spontaneous inner processing as constitutive of selfhood.

Alcaro, Antonio; Carta, Stefano, The 'Instinct' of Imagination: A Neuro-Ethological Approach to the Evolution of the Reflective Mind and Its Application to Psychotherapy, 2019supporting

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a neurobehavioral-affective-social self can emerge. Furthermore, Freud's concept of drive theory, one of discharge, has become superseded by an object-relations concept; thus, the drives, like the affects, and even like nerves, can now be seen to communicate by signals.

Schore locates the emergence of a neurobehavioural-affective-social self at the intersection of object-relations theory and developmental neuroscience, implying that early relational signalling is foundational to self-concept formation.

Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994aside

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Siegel (2012b) describes picking up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. He begins to view the psychiatric disorders through the lens of chaos and rigidity. He realizes that they can all be understood as states of disintegration, with health being the state of integration/self-regulation.

Winhall relays Siegel's hypothesis that psychopathology represents failures of self-organisation and self-regulation, contextualising the self concept within a complexity-theoretic framework where integration constitutes psychological health.

Winhall, Jan, Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Modelaside

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the noticing self or observer self… many textbooks also talk about something called 'self-as-process.' This term also has two meanings: A. It describes the ongoing process of consciously noticing your thoughts, feelings, actions… B. It describes the sense of self that arises from the process described above.

Harris surveys ACT's terminological landscape around self, distinguishing self-as-context, self-as-process, and the observer self, clarifying how different functional self concepts serve distinct clinical purposes within acceptance-based therapy.

Harris, Russ, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009aside

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