self
n. the totality of the individual, consisting of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and physical. Apart from its basic reference to personal identity, being, and experience, the term’s use in psychology is wide-ranging. According to William James, self can refer either to the person as the target of appraisal (i.e., one introspectively evaluates how one is doing) or to the person as the source of agency (i.e., one attributes the source of regulation of perception, thought, and behavior to one’s body or mind). Carl Jung maintained that the self gradually develops by a process of individuation, which is not complete until late maturity is reached. Alfred Adler identified the self with the individual’s lifestyle, the manner in which he or she seeks fulfillment. Karen D. Horney held that one’s real self, as opposed to one’s
idealized self-image, consists of one’s unique capacities for growth and development. Gordon W. Allport substituted the word proprium for self and conceived of it as the essence of the individual, consisting of a gradually developing body sense, identity, self-estimate, and set of personal values, attitudes, and intentions. Austrian-born U.S. psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1913–1981) used the term to denote the sense of a coherent, stable (yet dynamic) experience of one’s individuality, continuity in time and space, autonomy, efficacy, motivation, values, and desires; he believed that this sense emerges through healthy narcissistic development empathically supported by the significant figures in one’s early life and that, conversely, narcissistic developmental failure leads to a fragile or incoherent sense of self. See self psychology. See also false self; multiple selves; phenomenal
self; sense of self; true self.