The Self in the Emotionally Disturbed

Some key principles of Mead's psychology of the self are demostrated with a group of institutionalized child psychiatric patients as subjects. On two separate responses one year apart, changes were shown in how the subjects defined themselves, how they defined others, and how they thought others defined them. The patterns on these three dimensions were, on the second testing, more nearly what might be anticipated on the basis of Mead's theory, as compared with the responses on the first test. Those whose changes in self functions were most marked were also those whose overt behavior changed most significantly from symptomatic to non-symptomatic during the one-year period. Conversely, those whose overt behavior changed the least. It is tentatively concluded that (1) changes in one function of the self tend to be associated with changes in other functions, and (2) changes in the functions of the self tend to be associated with changes in the content of the self processes and (3) with changes in overt behavior.