Find Out About Psychoanalysis

For a very basic introduction from the BBC clickhere.

To go to The British Psychoanalytical Society web page click here.

For The British Confederation of Psychotherapists home page click here.

You might also be interested in the web page of the Tavistock Clinic (whose work is featured in the video shown in Week 3) - click here.

Lecture 2 Handout

Lecture 2: Sociology and the Self

Wish to consider the contribution of Sociology as a discipline to understanding the relationship between self and society.

The Enlightenment Self

Sociological accounts of the self are, at heart, dialogues with a powerful model of the individual that emerged during the formation of modernity. Key features of the account of the individual and the individual’s place in society:

• Emphasis on the individual and individuality – each person is seen as indivisible and unique.
• The individual is endowed with (and in some versions defined by) the capacity for consciousness (including consciousness of self), reflection and reason.
• A fixed, stable, essential self
• The individual is bounded and ‘self-contained’
• Rests on absolute dichotomies between individual and society, public and the private, mind and body
• Individual is ‘universal’ but in reality male and European? E.g. ‘The Rights of Man’


Sociology and the Self

Sociology never had an easy relationship with the Enlightenment individual and never put him at the centre of its study

The Foundations of Sociology

• Key theories set out to critique the assumptions about the reasoning, acting individual that informed thinking in Law, Politics and Economics at the time.

Market a neutral mechanism through which individuals freely exchange goods and services to maximise personal satisfaction? Durkheim’s discussion of the Division of Labour Economic and legal activity rests on pre-existing institutions and conventions.
Marx’s critique of capitalist economics argues that notions of ‘the market’, ‘freedom of choice’ are ideological constructions that mask structured inequalities – not just between individuals but groups – in resources and power. True individuality frustrated by current social conditions e.g. the alienation and commodification of the worker.

• Key theories also challenged the primacy of the individual in Enlightenment thinking by understanding people as products of the social conditions in which they live. The emphasis is on the ways in which individual behaviour and beliefs are shaped by wider social forces. Durkheim’s Study of Suicide What appears to be the most individual, personal act – the decision to take one’s own life – is actually a social phenomena.

• Key theories explore how individuality – both as an experience and as a value – emerges out of the social conditions of modernity. Durkheim – shift from mechanical to organic solidarity involves greater individuality. Marx – individualism is a bourgeois ideology. Weber – growth of individualism is a historical process eg Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

Some Twentieth Century Developments

• Interactionism of Mead and Goffman - a socially grounded self that develops through interaction with social world (Cooley – the looking glass self) and is dynamic not timeless. But is there life beyond social participation?

• Foucault and the constitution of the notion of the individual by disciplinary powers. Moral, legal social construction of ‘the individual’.

• Post-modernism eg Jean Baudrillard – challenging the coherence/validity of the ‘the self’.

These developments should be seen as part of a wider trend in C20th thought towards the ‘de-centring of the subject’.

Assessing the Sociological Vision

The strength of sociology has been the way in which it allows us to think about:

• The extent to which conceptions of self and experiences of self may be social and historical products
• How changing social conditions opportunities and threats to the development of ‘good enough’ selves
• Questions of power, difference and inequality

Limitations?

• Largely ignores personal experience and our inner life
• Largely ignores embodiment
• Dismissive of other academic areas?
• Assumes rather than analyses the interpretative processes through which people engage with social settings
• Talks a lot about identity but only tells half the story by focussing on social identity (‘me’) to the exclusion of personal identity (‘I’)
• Risks appearing distant from or dismissive of people’s experiences and concerns

Sociology has the potential to offer much useful insight into our lives and the relationship between self and society but to do this it must take the self seriously, be aware of the limitations of the discipline and be willing to learn from others.

Lecture 1 Handout

Lecture 1: The Self and Society

“ If there is one value that seems beyond reproach, in our current confused ethical climate, it is that of the self and the terms that cluster around it - autonomy, identity, individuality, liberty, choice, fulfilment.” (Nikolas Rose)

“ Currently we engage in structuring our lives so they appear individually meaningful, organized, coherent, and responsible. This individualized self is the primary, though not exclusive, subjectivity game in town …” [James A Holstein and Jaber F Gubrium, The Self We Live By (2000)]

Module themes: Self and Society

• The concept of ‘the Self’. Its changing and contested usage in everyday and academic discourse.
• The self-society relation. How does understanding the processes of self-formation shed new light on social issues?
• The society-self relation. How have changing social conditions altered our sense of self?

What is The Self?

Human beings have ‘a self’ and a consciousness of ‘self’ distinct from others:
• A psychological structure containing the various processes of mental life, embodied in the individual
• The ‘I’: personality, subjectivity and experience

The self is a ‘social’ self emerging out of and integrated into social interactions and social settings. Myth of the ‘self-contained’ individual – society enables as well as constrains individuality.

The self is of society but cannot be reduced to a collection of social roles or social identities. People have individual personalities and inner life. Their agency emerges out of their particular experience and subjectivity.

Once we accept the notion of a social self this raises important questions about changing social conditions and changing experiences of selfhood

Historical study and cross-cultural comparisons show major differences in both:
• How self is experienced
• How the relationship between self and social setting is understood

Debating the Self in Contemporary Society

• The Self is a construction but what kind of construction?

 Emerging out of psychological development
 Facilitated by interpersonal relations
 Produced by particular social conditions
 ‘Invented’ through culture and practices

• An object of contemplation or an experiencing subject?
• The knowing, reflexive individual and the workings of the unconscious
• The powerful self versus the disciplined self
• Achieving true selfhood – a crucial goal or an alienating fiction?

Scurry, Sniff, Hem and Haw

Note that the good mice who search for cheese have well developed noses and ears (for new opportunities). Is it me or is Haw (the one who never moves on) older than the others?

More Cheese Please

Workers who embrace change might enjoy this 'Who Moved My Cheese' Stress-Buster. This is one of a number of products available from whomovedmycheese.com.