The Conceptual Self in Context: Culture Experience Self Understanding

For years, thinkers have debated the meaning and origin of the self-concept. Among contested issues are how people in different cultures can have sharply different concepts of self, what can be known about the self-concepts of depressives and schizophrenics, how meditation can affect the sense of self, and if there is an inner self of selves, as James once suggested. In this collection, a prestigious group of psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers addresses these topics and presents some surprising answers. This is the third and last of the Emory Symposia organized around Ulric Neisser’s cognitive theory of self-knowledge; it goes beyond The Perceived Self and The Remembering Self to deal with some of the oldest–as well as some of the newest–psychological and philosophical questions surrounding the concept of self.