Abstract
We all have a self-concept that we have learned from our parents, teachers, and society. This important mental software defines our experience of consciousness, our abilities, and our potential for happiness. It is so basic to our being that it is hard for us to imagine just how different the experience of consciousness is to other people in other places and other times.
Man can be defined as the animal that can say “I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity. — Erich Fromm, 1955
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In the world of computer software the self-concept would represent the bottom layer on which specific programs such as your individual personality are added. It is a bit like a computer operating system: a graphical computer interface versus text orientation. Specific programs loaded on top of it will have drastically different characteristics depending on the operating system. Likewise, individual personalities will have drastically different characteristics depending on the underlying self-concept.
For a detailed development of the idea of consciousness as a recent invention, see The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976), and also Lyons (1978).
Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self, edited by Heelas and Lock (1981, p. 40).
Heelas and Lock (1981, p. 9).
Heelas and Lock (1981, p. 545).
Quotes from Lee in Jennings (1955, p. 290).
Jennings (1955, p. 295).
Spanos (1986, p.461).
See Gazzaniga (1988, p. 19).
Goodwin Chu quoted in Steinberg and Barnes (1988, p. 276).
Princeton anthropologist Clifford Geertz quoted in Gergen (1991, p. 9).
Kahn (1973, pp. 7, 103).
The brain is divided into two hemispheres, each controlling the opposite half of the body. The responsibility for attending to space on each side seems to be individually assigned, though modules on either side of the brain can normally initiate action on either side. This autonomous control certainly has survival value when things are happening simultaneously on both sides.
Jaynes (1976, p. 69; Iliad additions, pp. 72-83).
Baumeister (1987, p. 165).
Taylor (1989, p. 130).
Baumeister (1987, p. 169). For more on privacy see Taylor (1989, p. 291).
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© 1996 Thomas R. Blakeslee
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Blakeslee, T.R. (1996). Other Concepts of Self. In: Beyond the Conscious Mind. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-4533-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-4533-4_5
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