Perspective on the Psychology of Self

The present perspective on the psychology of self developed out of a search for an adequate conception of the person to round out an incompleteness in a model of friendship. After a review of five major points of disagreement among self theorists, a perspective is presented which distinguishes between the self as an identifiable entity and the specific attributes the individual regards as characteristic of that entity. Processes are proposed by which the person comes to develop a conception of himself as an identifiable entity, and the way in which his self-attributions, i.e., conceptions of what that entity is like, develop and change. A key motivational variable is the individual's concern with the well-being and worth of the entity identified as self. This key variable not only has important implications for the internal organization of self-attributes but also is manifest in four behavioral tendencies that provide a motivational link between the self and dyadic and person-group relations.