Self: Interdisciplinary Approaches

A truly remarkable explosion of interest in the self has taken place in the past two decades, in psychology and related disciplines. This book presents a wide range of recent work on the self, from self-awareness in chimpanzees to multiple-personality disorders, self-esteem in adolescents, as well as fundamental issues going back to the work of James, Cooley and others. Three main groups or clusters of themes emerge. The first cluster consists of chapters that discuss the organization and coherence of the self; the second one deals with self-awareness and self-deception; and the third one examines, in new ways, the question of the relationship between self and other. While it is difficult to predict exactly where future work on the self will lead scholars, this work points in some significant directions and provides a firm reference in the field.