인간에게 자아는 "나"와 "나"가 만날 때 일어나는 일입니다. 따라서 자아에 대한 핵심적인 심리적 질문은 바로 이것입니다: 사람은 자신이 누구인지 어떻게 파악하고 이해할 수 있는가? 지난 100년 동안 심리학자들은 자아(및 관련 정체성 개념)에 대한 연구에 다양한 방식으로 접근해 왔지만, 자아에 대한 세 가지 핵심 은유가 반복적으로 등장합니다. 첫째, 자아는 다른 사람 앞에서 행동을 수행함으로써 역할을 수행하고 특성을 나타내는 사회적 행위자로 볼 수 있습니다. 둘째, 자아는 내면의 욕구에 따라 행동하고 미래의 행동을 안내할 목표, 가치, 계획을 수립하는 동기 부여 주체입니다. 셋째, 자아는 결국 과거, 현재, 미래의 삶을 돌아보고 내가 누구인지, 어떻게 생겨났는지, 내 인생이 어디로 향하고 있는지에 대한 이야기를 만드는 자서전 작가가 되기도 합니다. 이 모듈에서는 배우, 주체, 작가로서의 자아에 대한 핵심 아이디어와 연구 결과를 간략하게 검토하고, 이러한 자아의 특징이 인간의 생애 과정에서 어떻게 발전하는지를 중점적으로 살펴봅니다.

• Development
• Goals
• Identity
• Life narrative
• Roles
• Self
• Traits

학습 목표

• Explain the basic idea of reflexivity in human selfhood—how the “I” encounters and makes sense of itself (the “Me”).
• Describe fundamental distinctions between three different perspectives on the self: the self as actor, agent, and author.
• Describe how a sense of self as a social actor emerges around the age of 2 years and how it develops going forward.
• Describe the development of the self’s sense of motivated agency from the emergence of the child’s theory of mind to the articulation of life goals and values in adolescence and beyond.
• Define the term narrative identity, and explain what psychological and cultural functions narrative identity serves.

인간 자아의 반사성, 즉 '나'가 어떻게 자기 자신('나')을 만나고 이해하는지에 대한 기본 개념을 설명합니다.
자아에 대한 세 가지 다른 관점, 즉 행위자, 대리인, 저자로서의 자아 사이의 근본적인 차이점을 설명합니다.
사회적 행위자로서의 자아가 2세 무렵에 어떻게 나타나고 앞으로 어떻게 발전하는지 설명하세요.
아동의 마음 이론의 출현부터 청소년기 이후의 삶의 목표와 가치의 명료화에 이르기까지 자아의 동기 부여된 주체감의 발달을 설명합니다.
내러티브 정체성이라는 용어를 정의하고, 내러티브 정체성이 어떤 심리적, 문화적 기능을 하는지 설명하세요.

Outside Resources

Web: The website for the Foley Center for the Study of Lives, at Northwestern University. The site contains research materials, interview protocols, and coding manuals for conducting studies of narrative identity.

http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/

Discussion Questions

1. Back in the 1950s, Erik Erikson argued that many adolescents and young adults experience a tumultuous identity crisis. Do you think this is true today? What might an identity crisis look and feel like? And, how might it be resolved?
2. Many people believe that they have a true self buried inside of them. From this perspective, the development of self is about discovering a psychological truth deep inside. Do you believe this to be true? How does thinking about the self as an actor, agent, and author bear on this question?
3. Psychological research shows that when people are placed in front of mirrors they often behave in a more moral and conscientious manner, even though they sometimes experience this procedure as unpleasant. From the standpoint of the self as a social actor, how might we explain this phenomenon?
4. By the time they reach adulthood, does everybody have a narrative identity? Do some people simply never develop a story for their life?
5. What happens when the three perspectives on self—the self as actor, agent, and author—conflict with each other? Is it necessary for people’s self-ascribed traits and roles to line up well with their goals and their stories?
6. William James wrote that the self includes all things that the person considers to be “mine.” If we take James literally, a person’s self might extend to include his or her material possessions, pets, and friends and family. Does this make sense?
7. To what extent can we control the self? Are some features of selfhood easier to control than others?
8. What cultural differences may be observed in the construction of the self? How might gender, ethnicity, and class impact the development of the self as actor, as agent, and as author?

Vocabulary

Autobiographical reasoning

The ability, typically developed in adolescence, to derive substantive conclusions about the self from analyzing one’s own personal experiences.

Big Five

A broad taxonomy of personality trait domains repeatedly derived from studies of trait ratings in adulthood and encompassing the categories of (1) extraversion vs. introversion, (2) neuroticism vs. emotional stability, (3) agreeable vs. disagreeableness, (4) conscientiousness vs. nonconscientiousness, and (5) openness to experience vs. conventionality. By late childhood and early adolescence, people’s self-attributions of personality traits, as well as the trait attributions made about them by others, show patterns of intercorrelations that confirm with the five-factor structure obtained in studies of adults.

Ego

Sigmund Freud’s conception of an executive self in the personality. Akin to this module’s notion of “the I,” Freud imagined the ego as observing outside reality, engaging in rational though, and coping with the competing demands of inner desires and moral standards.

Identity

Sometimes used synonymously with the term “self,” identity means many different things in psychological science and in other fields (e.g., sociology). In this module, I adopt Erik Erikson’s conception of identity as a developmental task for late adolescence and young adulthood. Forming an identity in adolescence and young adulthood involves exploring alternative roles, values, goals, and relationships and eventually committing to a realistic agenda for life that productively situates a person in the adult world of work and love. In addition, identity formation entails commitments to new social roles and reevaluation of old traits, and importantly, it brings with it a sense of temporal continuity in life, achieved though the construction of an integrative life story.

Narrative identity

An internalized and evolving story of the self designed to provide life with some measure of temporal unity and purpose. Beginning in late adolescence, people craft self-defining stories that reconstruct the past and imagine the future to explain how the person came to be the person that he or she is becoming.

Redemptive narratives

Life stories that affirm the transformation from suffering to an enhanced status or state. In American culture, redemptive life stories are highly prized as models for the good self, as in classic narratives of atonement, upward mobility, liberation, and recovery.

Reflexivity

The idea that the self reflects back upon itself; that the I (the knower, the subject) encounters the Me (the known, the object). Reflexivity is a fundamental property of human selfhood.

Self as autobiographical author

The sense of the self as a storyteller who reconstructs the past and imagines the future in order to articulate an integrative narrative that provides life with some measure of temporal continuity and purpose.

Self as motivated agent

The sense of the self as an intentional force that strives to achieve goals, plans, values, projects, and the like.

Self as social actor

The sense of the self as an embodied actor whose social performances may be construed in terms of more or less consistent self-ascribed traits and social roles.

Self-esteem

The extent to which a person feels that he or she is worthy and good. The success or failure that the motivated agent experiences in pursuit of valued goals is a strong determinant of self-esteem.

Social reputation

The traits and social roles that others attribute to an actor. Actors also have their own conceptions of what they imagine their respective social reputations indeed are in the eyes of others.

The Age 5-to-7 Shift

Cognitive and social changes that occur in the early elementary school years that result in the child’s developing a more purposeful, planful, and goal-directed approach to life, setting the stage for the emergence of the self as a motivated agent.

The “I”

The self as knower, the sense of the self as a subject who encounters (knows, works on) itself (the Me).

The “Me”

The self as known, the sense of the self as the object or target of the I’s knowledge and work.

Theory of mind

Emerging around the age of 4, the child’s understanding that other people have minds in which are located desires and beliefs, and that desires and beliefs, thereby, motivate behavior.

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Authors

• 

  Dan P. McAdams

  Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Northwestern University, and the Director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives.  He is the 2012 winner of the Jack Block Award for distinguished contributions to personality psychology, and the 2006 winner of the William James Award for his book, THE REDEMPTIVE SELF:  STORIES AMERICANS LIVE BY. 

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