Meads Self - Sociology

Sociology

A person, according to Mead, is a personality because he belongs to a community; he takes over the institutions of that community into his own behavior. The self is a development. Like a child's development, it is learned or taught by those surrounding it. The self is an object, the body does not experience itself as a whole, and rather, the self, in some way, enters into the experience of the self. The individual experiences himself indirectly. The individual becomes an object to himself by taking the attitudes of the individuals around him, within a social environment or context of experience and behavior. Mead believes that the self is essentially a social structure and it arises in social experience. It is impossible to consider a "self" arising outside of social experience.

Speech is the action that affects the individual and the effects upon the individual and the conversations with others. Along with speech, thinking, according to Mead, becomes elementary to social action. The person, in a sense is responding to himself and this social conduct provides the behavior within which self appears. Selves can only exist in definite relationships to other selves. People often make common responses toward certain things. These common responses are awakened in the individual, thus, when he is affecting other people, he brings about his own self. When putting himself in place of the generalized other, which represents the organized responses of all the members of the group, it is said that the man has character, in the moral sense. A self cannot exist unless there are other selves to look up to and to relate too. So, a self is a social product.

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