Understanding of the Self Essay

This perspective allows us to take a closer look on how members of our society interact with one another in their every day lives and how this interaction creates a final product that establishes a set of norms and behaviors that are considered the base of our societal relationship. Our values, behaviors and beliefs are the final product of society and those that we are closer to. A very important Philosopher in America history George Herbert Mead did a very good job explaining and supporting the basis of this perspective in 1934 when he disputed that “the self is a mental and social process, the reflective ability to see others in relation to ourselves in relation to others. Our interactions are based on language, based on words.” (Leon-Guerrero, A. (2014).

Chapter 3 of Essential of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach by James M. Henslin discusses the topic of socialization, which is the process by which people learn the characteristics of their group—the knowledge, attitudes, skills, norms, values, and actions thought appropriate for them. Sociologists try to determine how much of a person’s characteristics comes from “nature” (heredity) and how much from “nurture” (social environment). Studying feral, isolated, and institutionalized children, such as The Skeels/Dye Experiment, have helped them understand how “society makes us human.” The theories and research of Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Piaget to explain socialization into the self and mind. Cooley’s looking-glass self theory focuses on how we believe others perceive us.

To begin, the psychodynamic theory is based on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and primarily focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality. The psychodynamic theory includes the idea that people have defense mechanisms. Psychological defense mechanisms are ways of dealing with anxiety through unconsciously distorting one’s perception of reality, such as denial and repression. In addition, sexual impulses play a large role in the psychodynamic theory. According to Freud, part of personality is outside of awareness, unconscious. The unconscious has difficulty retrieving material and is well below the surface of awareness. Also, the past is important in the psychodynamic theory. There are some advantages and disadvantages to this theory. For instance, the advantages are: psychodynamic theory recognizes the importance of childhood; other theorists after Freud have revised the approach to be less controversial, and this theory has been

In the past social worker focused on the use of psychodynamic theory in social work practice, but now it is said that this theory is no longer relevant to social work practice. Sigmund Freud psychodynamic theory looks at how human behavior and relationships are shaped by conscious and unconscious influences. For Freud, psychodynamic theory included psychoanalysis that was used a treatment to reveal the unconscious activity of an individual by making them consciously aware of it. Further, he believed that he could help people release bottled up emotions and negative experiences that could be the cause of anxiety and depression. Social construction that occurs because of a revolt effectively alters society as a whole is social worker relevancy

There is a lot of things that I have learned about myself in the past few weeks of this course. I have learned many things about myself that I would have never known if it was not for this course. I have learned about my; self concept, attitudes and feelings. I have also learned about social influence, group dynamics and relationships. I learned about myself and how to describe the way that I am and the way that I think.

1) Show how the experience of Eleanor Longdon and the people described in the NY Times article reflect a notion of selfhood that is consistent with that proposed by social constructionist approaches to psychic life and deviance.

The theory being tested in the article is called symbolic interactionist, where role identities are definitions of the self in terms of the social roles that one holds. The roles being discussed are positions in social structure such as behavioral expectations, including reciprocal rights. “According to theory, individuals obtain classifications of themselves as social objects and evaluations of themselves as worthy and competent social actors through taking the role of the other and accepting others categorizations and appraisals of them as self-descriptive”(p. 361).

Therapeutic use of self involves using one’s personality, body language, active listening that is used to create and maintain a therapeutic relationship with others (Lowe et al., 2007). Establishing trust is also an important aspect of therapeutic use of self, to address the needs and goals of the client, which helps our scope of practice to remain client-centered. Using therapeutic use of self is beneficial for occupational therapists (OT), as it facilitates interaction with the client. It also encourages and allows the therapist to obtain necessary information, and to alleviate fear or anxiety that may take place during treatment session. During Level I Fieldwork at a SNF, I was able to apply these principles during a treatment session for a client diagnosed with dementia that was agitated and non-compliant with the activity. To divert her attention to the activity, and to get her to understand that I was

The Social Construction of Reality is a book written in 1966 by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The social construction of reality suggests that as humans the way we present ourselves is shaped by the interactions we have with other people, and shaped by our own experiences. For example, when we are born, we are raised a certain way. The way we are raised is a dependency from our cultural background, religious beliefs and morals. What we were raised to believe affects how we look at others, how we present ourselves in front of others and how others look at us.

‘In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self--that is any idea he appropriates--appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking glass self: " Each to each a

     Two things can happen when we are required to base our definition of “self” on others.  One can take others’ ways of living and thinking, process them, and formulate his or her own definition, independent of anyone else.  Or, one can use the relationships he or she has with other people on which to base their own definition of self, thus making him or her dependent on those other people.  As young people, we learn and take in all we can through the world, our experiences, and relationships with other people.  From there, we grow and establish our own identities, our own “selves”, in response to those interactions with others.  This definition is continually growing and progressing as we evolve as people, interacting with different people in different environments and

This part will discuss self-awareness and continuous self-development through analyzing a number of prior researches, then come up with the link of them to support my role as a manager in the future.

goals that promote individuation, and those that promote affiliation in generating individual differences in self-construals (Guisinger and Blatt, 1994)( Kagitcibasi,2005)( Markus and Kitayama, 1991) (Singelis, 1994). Others have created details that formulations that refer to differences in the perspective people take vis-à-vis the self (Kitayama and Imada,2008), distinctive variations of propositional and, to a lesser degree, conceptual self-representations (Schlicht,2009), diverse levels of inclusiveness of the self's conceptualization (Brewer and Gardner, 1996), and diverse degrees and extends to which people are connected in an informal community (Muthuswamy,2007).

School, to me and among many peers of my age, is not a distant term. I have spent one-third of my life time sitting in classrooms, every week since I was seven years old. After spending this much time in school, many things and experiences that happened there have left their mark in my memory. Some are small incidences while some have had a great impact on me. However, regardless the degree of significance, things that happened all contributed to shape the person that I am now.

There are three very important aspects that play a major rule in my life. They can be categorized as intellectual, social, and spiritual. My intellectual self is interesting because I am mainly right-brained which means that I tend to use my creativity more than my mathematical skills, also making me a visual learner. My social self consists of friends, family, and my surroundings. I spend most of my time at home with my family. Whenever I am with my friends, I observe their behaviors and listen to their opinions. I am more of an independent type of person. Being with different people has influenced me into appreciating different cultures and beliefs. I have learned things that have now been incorporated into my own set of beliefs and