Self Concept

Your self-concept is the collection of beliefs you hold about yourself. These smaller, specific beliefs are called the Self-schema. They are old sets of memories that would have generalized into beliefs about yourself. For eg, the Self-Schema/belief that 'I am introverted'.

A major feature of this self-schema is that it acts like a self fulfilling prophecy. Your self-schema tells you how to act, and highlights your memories when you acted that way. If you have a self-schema that says 'I am introverted', that will drive your actions at a party(stand by yourself in one of the corners of the room). And when you try to remember the last party you went to, you will tend to remember it in a way that supports your existing belief that you are an introvert: "I hated going to the party because I didn't want to interact with people".

These self-schemas are generally given to us in our childhood by our caregivers when they tell us how to behave. For eg. "Good girls don't make noise." Lot of our current behaviors come from these "Good child/bad child" schemas. Transactional Analysis(a system of therapy) says that these childhood schemas can lead to lifelong standards you hold yourself to - called Drivers.

According to Carl Rogers, Self concept has 3 parts...

People can have a social identity as well.

Existential

  • We see ourselves as separate from the world
  • Distinct from others
  • Constant(as opposed to temporarily tired(which is a state))

Philosophy of Self in Eastern Traditions

Links to this note

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Self Schema

Individual beliefs that you hold about yourself is called Self-Schema. Collectively, they make up the Self-Concept. There is a system of therapy called Schema Therapy that deals with this.

Ideal Self

This refers to who we want to be. This can be our long term goals, ambitions, etc. One interesting fact about your Ideal self is that it is dynamic. It is easier to change than most of the other components in Self-Concept.

Self Esteem

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Social identity theory

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Published on: Jan 27, 2022

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