2023-06-23 08:52:42
The psychologist Sergio García Soriano talks to us about the “I” in a new installment of his Psychology Alphabet for EFEsalud
The Self in the Alphabet of Psychology. The self is a term we use to designate ourselves. However it was not always so. In the 17th century, when someone knocked on the door, it was answered by the proper name of the person who called. More than with the pronoun “I”.
The “I” would be a sensory organ responsible for the perception of attention and memory. And it is also the one that gives identity and continuity to the person.
However, the self has servitudes. Those of the “superego”, of the “it” and of the “reality”. The superego would be the phrases of the shoulds “You have to do this.” They serve the morality of the individual and somehow skew the vision of the self. And on the other hand there would also be the “it” that will be the impulses and the pleasure principle. That he is going to say “do it now because you feel like it”.
And the “I” is found among instances that subject it to partial visions. However, these tensions or servitudes of the self are structural. You can’t kill them.
The self-perception of oneself has to do with how we see ourselves in different facets of our own life. What roles do we play? And there the I changes depending on the demands from the outside and what image the others give me back to me. Therefore, what they think about people at school, at work and at home help shape the idea that each one has about himself. When Rimbaud says “I am another” he refers to this. Human beings are social and define themselves in relation to others.
This does not mean that we have to generate a “strong self” but rather that we have to tolerate and know the information that comes from different areas to generate our own criteria. When one thinks of fortifying the self, it would be to think of people with an air of self-sufficiency and very believers in the autonomy of the self, when the interesting thing is to be able to make variations of the “self”.
For example, in writers or artists it is very general to tell them to remove the “I” in order to create, write. That is, remove the personal parts to generate a universal work.
The psychologist Sergio García Soriano/Courtesy photo
Here you can get more information about the psychologist Sergio García Soriano
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