BASIC SCIENCE OF

SELF

25-06-2024 1
SYNOPSIS
1. INTRODUCTION.
2. HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
3. CHARACTERS OF SELF.
4. COMPONENTS OF SELF.
5. ASPECTS TO SELF.
6. DIMENSIONS OF SELF.
7. DISORDERS OF SELF.
8. INVESTIGATIONS.
9. SELF IN CHILDREN.
10. FUTURE PERSPECTIVES.
25-06-2024 2
DEFINITION OF SELF

• Psychophysical total of a person at any given moment, including conscious and

unconscious attributes.

25-06-2024 REFERENCE- CTP 3

INTRODUCTION
The emergence of a science of self and its relevance to psychiatry.

It acknowledges diverse perspectives across disciplines studying the concept of "self.“

25-06-2024 4
INTRODUCTION
Until recently, its scientific importance was overlooked, lacking a unified framework
for investigation compared to other scientific domains.

These collaborations highlight the neural basis of self-representation and its impact
on individual functionality and social interactions.

This evolving research spans psychological, behavioral, and neurophysiological levels,

illuminating its developmental aspects and potential in other animal species.

William James (1890), a famous psychologist, discussed the “me” which he called the
empirical self.

25-06-2024 5
INTRODUCTION
SELF REPRESENTATION

PERCEIVE

REGULATE

INTERACT SOCIALLY

25-06-2024 6
HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
• Over millennia, the concept of self has been pondered by philosophers, artists,
and others.

• In the West, emphasis on community prevailed until the Renaissance and

Enlightenment, which celebrated individualism and personal identity.

• Technological advances, like mirrors, further shaped self-perception.

• Contemporary capitalist societies in North America and Europe
promote individualism.

25-06-2024 7
• Philosophically, debates have questioned the existence of a unified self, with
figures like Hume and Nietzsche arguing it may be a fictional construct.

• Scientifically, while some reject the notion of a self, others explore its biological
and evolutionary significance.

• This diversity in perspectives has led to interdisciplinary clashes but also drives
clearer definitions and research goals.

25-06-2024 8
 CHARACTERS OF SELF

EGO- SELF- SELF-

EGO-VITALITY UNITY
ACTIVITY IDENTITY BOUNDARIES

25-06-2024 9
 SELF CONCEPT
COMPONE
NTS OF

SELF
SELF ESTEEM
SELF
SELF EFFICACY

25-06-2024 10
SELF CONCEPT
• The self-concept encompasses an individual's perceptions, beliefs, and emotions
about themselves across various dimensions of life. This includes how one views
themselves currently ("who I am"), past experiences, and future aspirations
("who I will become").

• In terms of current identity, the self-concept pertains to specific domains such as

body image ("I have a broad nose"), social roles ("I am a student"), personality
traits ("I am outgoing"), and skills ("I am good in chess").

• It also extends to beliefs and attitudes, encompassing values, preferences, and

philosophical outlooks on life.

25-06-2024 11
 Social and learnt.

Organized.
Characteri
Has discrepant aspects.
stics Of
Self Positive and Negative Self concepts.
Concept
Provides self direction.

Stable yet dynamic

25-06-2024 12
 Physical self concept
Involves perception of one’s body, attractiveness & satisfaction

Psychological Self-Concept
Includes beliefs about one’s personality traits, abilities, weakness & adjustment

Attitudinal self concept

Encompasses values,beliefs,ideals, & attitudes towards aspects of life

25-06-2024 13
SELF ESTEEM
• Self-esteem is our evaluation of our own worth based on how we perceive our
traits, beliefs, and opinions.

• It reflects whether we see ourselves positively or negatively in terms of abilities

and attributes, as well as our feelings of affection towards ourselves.

• It's not always linked to liking oneself; someone may rate themselves highly in
certain aspects yet still struggle with self-liking.

• Ultimately, self-esteem shapes our overall sense of self-worth and impacts our
mental well-being.
25-06-2024 14
 CHARACTERS OF SELF ESTEEM
Has social origins

Both person centered as well as collective

Involves feelings of belonging and mastery

Evaluation in several domains of life determines self esteem

Affected by actual-ideal self discrepancy

25-06-2024 15
IMPORTANCE OF SELF ESTEEM

• Low self-esteem is linked to negative outcomes like poor academic performance,

criminal behavior, risky sexual practices, substance abuse, eating disorders,
depression, and suicidal tendencies.
• People with low self-esteem often take failures personally, feeling humiliated and
attributing their shortcomings to stable personal flaws.
• In contrast, those with high self-esteem show resilience, initiative, and confidence in
their abilities.
• They are more willing to assert themselves, take risks, and rebound from setbacks
due to positive early experiences and supportive relationships.
• Thus, while low self-esteem can lead to serious consequences, high self-esteem
fosters emotional strength and resilience.
25-06-2024 16
SELF EFFICACY.
• Self-efficacy, defined by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977, is the belief in one's
ability to master a situation and achieve desired outcomes through personal
effort.
• It strongly influences how individual’s approach and persist in coping with
challenges.
• When people doubt their capabilities, they tend to avoid difficult situations and
prefer tasks where they feel more confident.
• It also affects the amount of effort they invest and how long they persevere in
challenging circumstances.

25-06-2024 17
KEY STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE
SELF-EFFICACY
Performance Success in varied situations, especially when attributed to one's own efforts, builds strong efficacy
accomplishment beliefs.

Observing others succeed through persistence provides models for effective behavior, enhancing self-
Vicarious observation efficacy.

Verbal persuasion Encouragement and positive feedback that reinforce belief in one's abilities can improve self-efficacy.

Managing emotional Recognizing and channeling emotions like anxiety into productive energy for tackling tasks is crucial for
arousal performance

25-06-2024 18
ASPECTS EGO

TO
SELF
NON-VERBAL
COMMUNICATION SELF EMBODIMENT

BODY IMAGE

25-06-2024 19
EGO & SELF:
• The concept of self has evolved significantly since ancient Greek philosophy,
influencing modern psychiatry where disturbances in self-perception vary by illness
type.

• In psychiatry, 'ego' is often used interchangeably with 'self', although it carries

a more technical connotation.

• Freud likened the ego to Nietzsche's idea of a center of consciousness,

navigating between reason, passions, societal norms (super-ego), and
primal instincts (id), often struggling to reconcile their conflicting demands.

25-06-2024 20
 SELF & EMBODIMENT
• The tradition of separating the body from the self dates back to Descartes' dualism, which
posited a clear distinction between the thinking immaterial self and the physical body.

• Recent philosophical and empirical work, however, argues for a complex interaction
where our embodied experiences profoundly influence consciousness, including thinking,
memory, language, and our sense of self.

• In summary, despite the deeply set convention to treat the self and the body as separate
entities, it is important to keep in focus the fact the self and the body are truly inseparable
and that the conceptual distinction is for convenience only.

25-06-2024 21
SELF CONCEPT & BODY IMAGE
1.Subject: As the center of our experience, like a feeling of "I."
2.Object: As a physical thing in the world, separate from ourselves.
• Most of the time, we are unaware of our bodies as objects. But in situations like
pain or strong emotions, we become acutely aware of our physicality.
The different terms used to describe how we conceptualize our bodies, including:
• Body schema: Refers to the spatial awareness of our body, including things we
carry like glasses.
• Body image: How we perceive our body's appearance, influenced by social
factors and unconscious thoughts.
• Body concept: Similar to body image, but can also include more abstract ideas
about ourselves.
25-06-2024 22
SELF & NON-VERBAL
COMMUNICATION
• In social interactions, we communicate our self-image through both words and
nonverbal cues.
• Our nonverbal communication, including gestures, postures, and facial
expressions, can reveal more about ourselves than our words.
• Our self-image is based on various factors like our name, body, gender, and social
roles.
• Nonverbal communication is crucial for conveying these aspects of ourselves. It
can also reveal unintended information such as personality traits and past
experiences.

25-06-2024 23
• why nonverbal communication is so important:
1. Express things words can't, like physical appearance or emotions.
2. More powerful than words, like a teacher's gesture being more effective
than an instruction.
3. Less likely to be fake than verbal communication.
4. Convey messages that social norms prevent us from saying directly.
5. Add emphasis and meaning to verbal communication.
• In conclusion, nonverbal communication is a powerful tool for expressing
ourselves and understanding others. It works alongside verbal communication to
give a complete picture of who we are.

25-06-2024 24
DIMENSIONS OF SELF

• Comparative • Human • Clinical

Evolutionary Developmental perspective.
Perspective Perspective • Disease
• Idea of • I & ME SELF perspective
PROTOSELF

25-06-2024 25
COMPARITIVE EVOLUTION
PERSPECTIVE
Self-Representation in Simple Development of Conscious Role of Cortical Evolution
Vertebrates: Neurobiological Basis
Awareness
The development of cortical
Coordination of responses in Higher levels of self- models of the body in relation to
Basic mechanisms to simple vertebrates forms the awareness, including a its environment allows for more
distinguish Self & foundation upon which more sense of subjectivity and precise movement and interaction.
external stimuli. complex forms of self- ownership of actions,
representation evolve.. require a more evolved
Essential for survival and complex nervous This cortical development
behavior such as system. supports enhanced flexibility,
withdrawing from foundational level of decision-making, and planning
processing, termed the Humans, for instance, capabilities, which are crucial for
noxious stimuli. "protoself," is centralized in achieve this conscious complex behaviors in animals with
There is no conscious neurobiological structures like awareness through the more sophisticated nervous
the brainstem and ability to mentally
awareness of a "self" as represent their own
systems.
a distinct subject. hypothalamus.
actions and interactions .
with the world.

25-06-2024 26
 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
PERSPECTIVE.
• Researchers in child and adolescent development view humans as complex
beings whose self-representational abilities evolve over time.

• They follow a multidimensional approach, considering the development of

various aspects of self-representation from childhood to adulthood.

I SELF

ME SELF
25-06-2024 27
 SELF AWARENESS-
SELF AGENCY-
an appreciation of one’s internal states,needs, thoughts,
the sense of ownership of one’s thoughts and actions. and emotions

I SELF

SELF COHERANCE-
a sense that one is a single,
SELF CONTINUITY- coherent, bounded entity
the sense that one remains the same person over time.

25-06-2024 28
 BY WILLIAM JAMES
MATERIAL
-ME

ME
SELF
SPRITUAL- SOCIAL -
ME ME

25-06-2024 29
• The material self refers to all tangible objects, places and people that are called as “mine” or “my”.

• It includes both the bodily self and extracorporeal (beyond the body) self which can be referred to as
extended self.

• The social self is the self known by others. William James said “”A man has as many social selves as
there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind”.

• Our self-image (i.e., how I see myself to be) is influenced by how we think others perceive us. So,
we may think of ourselves as intelligent if our teachers and family think of us like that.

• The spiritual self refers to the psychological self and comprises of our self perceived thoughts,
beliefs, values, needs, motives, feelings, interests and traits.

25-06-2024 30
• Recently, however, there's been increasing focus on implicit cognitive processes
related to the I-self, thanks to advancements in cognitive abilities assessment and
neuroimaging technologies.

• While the Jamesian framework is widely used, there's ongoing debate over a
unified taxonomy of self-representation, especially in adult populations.

• Efforts to integrate evolutionary, developmental, and adult perspectives into a

comprehensive theoretical framework are ongoing, with potential contributions
from dynamical systems theory and theoretical-computational neuroscience.

25-06-2024 31
• While the Jamesian framework is widely used, there's ongoing debate over a
unified taxonomy of self-representation, especially in adult populations.

• Efforts to integrate evolutionary, developmental, and adult perspectives into a

comprehensive theoretical framework are ongoing, with potential contributions
from dynamical systems theory and theoretical-computational neuroscience.

25-06-2024 32
CLINICAL PERSPECTIVE

Psychiatric
syndromes Neurological
syndromes

25-06-2024 33
PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS
• Schizophrenia is viewed in psychiatry as a disorder affecting how individuals
perceive themselves.
• Symptoms like auditory hallucinations, delusions about identity and control, and
disruptions in thought processes reflect disturbances in both subjective and
objective aspects of self.
• Early psychiatric views likened schizophrenia to "an orchestra without a
conductor," highlighting disunity in consciousness and breakdowns in emotion
and volition.
• Contemporary theories suggest that self-representation depends on the brain's
ability to integrate information across regions.
• Other disorders like anorexia nervosa, dissociative disorders, social anxiety
disorder, and personality disorders also show significant disruptions in self-
perception.
25-06-2024 34
NEUROLOGICAL SYNDROMES
• Patients with brain damage, often from strokes, can show mismatches between
their beliefs about themselves and their actual behaviors.
• For instance, those with alien limb or alien hand syndromes may experience
involuntary movements that surprise them, influenced by where their brain is
damaged.
• Others, like those with unilateral spatial neglect, may ignore stimuli on one side
of their body, even denying ownership of affected limbs despite retaining
personal awareness.
• Damage to the prefrontal cortex can also disrupt self-regulation, causing changes
in behavior despite knowing social norms.
• These conditions reveal how disruptions in self-representation can affect
individuals function, both to themselves and to those around them.
25-06-2024 35
DISORDERS
OF EGO VITALITY-
• EGO
UNITY-Autoscopy,
SELF feeling of ACTIVITY-the
dissociative
deadness ‘my-ness’ of
disorder
actions

SELF IDENTITY- BOUNDARIES-

Possession Thought
disorder insertion,
withdrawal

25-06-2024 36
 AUTOSCOPY
SIX TYPES OF AUTOSCOPY:

Negative Inner Autoscopic Out-of- Heautoscopy proper.

Feeling of autoscopy autoscopy hallucinatio body
presence n exp.

25-06-2024 37
DISSOCIATIVE
IDENTITY(MULTIPLEPERSONALITY) DISORDER
• In dissociative (hysterical) states, so-called dual and multiple personalities have been described.

AN INTERESTING STORY TIME:

• Before the widespread recognition of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as multiple
personality disorder) in psychiatric practice, Larmore et al. (1977) presented a case study
involving a 35-year-old woman from rural Kentucky. She had a history of suicide attempts she
claimed no memory of. Through a hypnotic interview, it was discovered she had four distinct
personalities: Faith, described as kind and loving but struggling with expression and criticism;
Alicia, who manifested aggressive or self-destructive behavior and claimed control over Faith's
functions; Alicia–Faith, aware of Alicia but not of Faith or Guardian Angel; and Guardian Angel,
appearing after her grandfather's death, claiming to protect Faith.

25-06-2024 38
• Abse states that ‘one-way amnesia’ is usual for multiple personality; that is, personality A is
amnesic for the other personality B, but the second, B, can discuss the experiences of A.

• Usually, A is inhibited and depressed and B is freer and more elated. The forms of multiple
personality seen in practice areusually:
• simultaneous partial personalities,
• successive well-defined partial personalities, or
• clustered multiple partial personalities.

• When such patients have been treated in psychotherapy, ingenious explanations are often given
by patient and by therapist for the appearance of the additional personalities.

25-06-2024 39
DISORDERS OF IDENTITY
• Some individuals suffering from conditions like schizophrenia, organic disorders, neuroses, or
depression may experience disruptions in their sense of self-awareness and continuity over time.

• However, patients with schizophrenia might deny this continuity, experiencing a change where they
feel like a completely different person from their past self.
• This can manifest as a passive experience where they believe another self has taken over their
identity.

• In less severe cases, individuals in health or with neuroses and personality disorders may also
feel a sense of altered continuity, where they perceive significant changes in themselves without
losing touch with reality or believing they are actually a different person.

• For instance, someone may feel dramatically different after a life-changing event or during
emotional growth.

25-06-2024 40
• In both psychotic and non-psychotic contexts, the lack of a clear sense of identity
continuity can lead to inertia in schizophrenia and apathy in depression.

• Individuals with schizophrenia may doubt their continuity from past to present
due to disturbances in their sense of self, while those with depression often
struggle to envision a future and feel everything is bleak.

• Maintaining insight into these changes as part of an illness process is crucial.

• It involves recognizing that despite subjective changes, one remains the same
person affected by the illness's impact on their thoughts and feelings.

25-06-2024 41
POSSESSION STATE
• In the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, possession
states are categorized under dissociative (conversion) disorders (F44.3).

• These states involve a temporary loss of personal identity and awareness of

surroundings, where individuals feel taken over by spirits, deities, or other
entities.

• This phenomenon can occur outside of psychiatric disorders, such as in cultural or

religious contexts, and may include mass hypnosis or individual experiences
induced by unusual situations.

25-06-2024 42
• When considered pathological, these states cause distress and impairment
beyond ceremonial settings, unlike nonpathological spiritual experiences which
lack suffering, functional impairment, or psychiatric comorbidity.

• Neuroscience acknowledges that possession and trance states can also arise from
neurological conditions involving the basal ganglia and frontoparietal lobes,
suggesting an integrative approach blending neuroscience with sociocultural
perspectives on self-construction.

25-06-2024 43
 DISORDERS OF BOUNDARIES OF
SELF
• Disorder of self-boundaries involves difficulty distinguishing between one's own
identity and external entities.
• It's not limited to schizophrenia; for instance, LSD intoxication can cause anxiety
with a feeling of imminent loss of self.
• In schizophrenia, individuals often experience a blurring of their self-boundaries,
perceiving a fusion of their own identity with external influences.
• This includes symptoms like passivity experiences, where thoughts or actions are
incorrectly attributed to outside forces rather than recognized as originating
internally.
• Auditory hallucinations, for example, occur when inner thoughts are
misinterpreted as coming from external sources.
• Delusions of control further compound this confusion, where sensations or
actions believed to be self-generated are perceived as controlled by external
entities.
25-06-2024 44
• Outside of schizophrenia, alterations in self-boundaries are also evident in ecstasy
states, occurring in both normal individuals and those with personality disorders
or psychoses.
• These states involve feelings of unity with the universe or spiritual elements,
contrasting with schizophrenia where the loss of boundary distinction occurs
without awareness.
• Ecstasy experiences are marked by a temporary sense of merging or oneness,
often intensified by emotional states.
• Disruptions in self-boundaries are a key feature across various psychological
conditions, each influencing how individuals perceive and interpret their personal
identity in relation to the external world.

25-06-2024 45
INVESTIGATIONS
• Over the past 50 years, there has been a significant shift in studying self-
representation, moving beyond traditional approaches in philosophy, literature,
and clinical settings to incorporate cognitive and neuroscience methodologies.
• This shift was made possible by advancements like fMRI and TMS.
• Key insights emerged from split-brain studies, where patients with severed
corpus callosum showed distinct functions between their cerebral hemispheres.
• These studies, pioneered by Roger Sperry, revealed specialized functions such as
language processing primarily in the left hemisphere.
• They also demonstrated that each hemisphere can exhibit unique consciousness
traits and decision-making styles.

25-06-2024 46
• Despite these hemisphere-specific capabilities, individuals with split brains
typically appear unified in everyday behavior due to compensatory mechanisms
and indirect connections between hemispheres through other brain structures.

• These findings challenge the notion of a unified consciousness, suggesting

instead a dual or multiple foundation to normal consciousness.

• Overall, these studies underscore the brain's complexity as a dynamic, self-

organizing system, prompting a reevaluation of how we understand human
cognition and consciousness.

25-06-2024 47
• Researchers such as Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Daniel Wolpert, and Chris Frith have
investigated how the brain distinguishes between self-generated and externally
induced sensations.
• Their work has focused on experimental setups involving tactile stimulation, where
subjects experienced differences in tickling sensations depending on whether they
self-produced the stimulation or it was produced by a robot.
• In these experiments, self-produced stimulation was rated as less tickling and
pleasant compared to robot-produced stimulation.
• Moreover, introducing delays between the subject's action and the resulting
stimulation altered their perception, with longer delays reducing the sensation of
self-generation.
25-06-2024 48
• Neuroimaging studies associated with these experiments highlighted reduced
activity in specific brain regions during self-produced stimulation, such as the
parietal operculum and anterior cingulate cortex.
• These findings suggest that the brain uses predictive signals to attenuate the
sensory consequences of self-generated actions, distinguishing them from
externally generated sensations.
• Individuals with delusions of control, who struggle to differentiate self-generated
actions from external influences, showed impaired responses in such
experiments, further supporting the role of predictive mechanisms in
distinguishing self from nonself sensations.

25-06-2024 49
• Overall, these studies contribute to understanding how the brain processes
sensory information to maintain a distinction between self-generated actions and
external events, underscoring the importance of predictive mechanisms in
shaping our perception of agency and self-awareness.

25-06-2024 50
SELF IN
CHILDRE
N

25-06-2024 51
DEVELOPMENT PHASES OF SELF-
IMAGE

25-06-2024 52
 Babies and • From birth, babies can copy facial expressions like
sticking out their tongues. This shows they are

Interaction
ready to interact with people. For example, a
baby might copy a parent's smile.

• Smiling helps form a bond between parents and

children. For example, when a baby smiles at their

Smiling mother, the mother feels loved and responds with

more affection. Blind babies also smile around the
same age, suggesting smiling is natural.

25-06-2024 53
LATER DEVELOPMENT

Stability of attachment
• Attachment types tend to remain stable unless there are
significant changes in the child's life. Securely attached children
handle new challenges better and seek help when needed.

Parent-Child Relationship
• Ongoing good parenting likely supports a child's development
and problem-solving abilities.

25-06-2024 54
ATTACHMENT

• Attachment is the bond that makes babies feel secure

with certain people, usually their parents. For
DEFINITION
example, a baby might feel calm and happy when
held by their mother.

• Psychologist John Bowlby observed that children who

don't form secure attachments struggle with
relationships later in life. For example, a child who
Human
didn't bond well with their mother might find it hard
Attachment
to make friends. Mary Ainsworth developed a test
(the "strange situation") to study attachment in
infants.

25-06-2024 55
TYPES OF ATTACHMENT

Secure Insecure- Insecure- Disorganized

Attachment: Avoidant Ambivalent Attachment
• Babies feel safe Attachment Attachment • Babies show mixed
and interact with • Babies avoid or • Babies want to be or confused
their mother when ignore their close but also behaviors, often
she returns after mother upon her resist contact with seen in maltreated
leaving the room. return. their mother infants.

25-06-2024 56
• Mirror Test: At about 18 months, children recognize themselves in a mirror and may touch a mark
on their forehead. For example, a child might notice a smudge of lipstick on their forehead and
try to wipe it off. This shows they have a sense of self.

• Growing Self-Concept: Children gradually understand themselves in various ways, including their
physical presence, social roles, and private thoughts. For example, a child might understand they
are the same person at home and at school and have their own thoughts that others don't know.

• Self-Esteem Development: Young children often have very positive views of themselves, which
become more realistic as they grow older. For example, a 3-year-old might think they can run as
fast as a superhero, but as they grow, they understand their real abilities.

25-06-2024 57
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• With the increasing emphasis on considerations of self-processing, whether current technologies
are capable of providing the data that may ultimately prove necessary for describing the
operations involved in such processing
• Advancements in understanding self-processing prompt questions about the capabilities of
current technologies to gather essential data.
• Technologies like diffusion MRI and fMRI are evolving, aiming for faster and more precise imaging.
• Projects such as the Human Connectome Project are mapping brain connectivity in large groups,
offering insights into typical brain networks and individual variations.
• Researchers are using this data to explore disruptions in connectivity seen in developmental,
degenerative, and mental disorders, identifying key differences in how brain networks function.
• While these approaches are complex and labor-intensive, they show promise in advancing our
understanding of self-processing and its implications for psychiatric disorders.

25-06-2024 58
 • Researchers are using this data to explore disruptions in connectivity seen in developmental,
degenerative, and mental disorders, identifying key differences in how brain networks
function.

• While these approaches are complex and labor-intensive, they show promise in advancing our
understanding of self-processing and its implications for psychiatric disorders.

• While fully grasping every aspect of "the self" as it's defined in various nuanced ways may
never be accomplished, ongoing scientific efforts to study how individuals process their sense
of self, within certain boundaries and with noted limitations, offer hope for advancing our
understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to numerous psychiatric disorders.

25-06-2024 59
REFERENCES
• Kaplan & sadock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry.
• Sims- symptoms of the mind 7th edition.
• Fish’s clinical psychopathology. 4th edition.
• Atkinson & Hilgard- Introduction to psychology.

25-06-2024 60
 THANK YOU

25-06-2024 61