The Importance Of Self-Concept

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Self-concept has always been a topic of interest whereby different schools of thought have made their contribution to the concept of self. Major interest in self-concept from philosophers, religious thinkers, politicians and psychologist all have their view point on the topic. Leary & Tangney (2012) claims "Google Scholar yields 3 million citations, and limiting focus to professional search engines {the Web of Science, PsyciNFO) still yields tens of thousands of articles in which self-concept or identity are included as key words" (p.70). It is an indication of the human quest to know their self. Just as there are many schools of thought on self-concept there are also those who do not support a view of self-concept. According to Silvia…show more content…
Since Duval and Wicklund (1972) showed that self-focused attention promotes self-evaluation, a massive amount of research has connected self-awareness to aversive, dysfunctional, and problematic outcomes (Ingram, 1990; Wells & Matthews, 1994) (p. 1). A balance is therefore required for self-concept. Silvia & O’Brian (2004) agree with May 1967 that self-awareness can lead to unnecessary self-criticism, however, self-awareness can ultimately lead to constructive living. Avoiding self-awareness is not the solution, but the intention is for people to achieve a synthesis of the objective and the subjective states-it is imperative they maximize their gain and minimize their suffering from self awareness (p.2). This paper seeks to explore three of the multiple views on self concept. The Human psyche views the self concept from the Humanistic, existential and categorical self and Christian perspective. Humanistic views of…show more content…
Existence meaning "might be that it contains those givens (existential conditions) that are due to our being. Based on their freedom – which is one of those givens – it is up to each individual how they take a position in regard to self and being in-the-world: ‘The person must create his own essence by throwing himself into the world, by suffering in it, by fighting in it, he defines himself gradually’ (Sartre 1944/200 (p.7)" (p. 8) The Categorical Self refers to the different categories organism used to define itself. Unlike the existential self, categorical self develops later on in life. According to Kessel & Cole et al (1992) categorical self develops later on in life and many changes occur. It changes genetically during a child’s cognitive development and during social development. The categorical self includes every aspect of the object self, the way one looks, feels, belief and thoughts of one-self (p.

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