The+Self,+the+I,+and+the+Me

Mead was a Pragmatist, which means that he believed that a true reality could not exist “out there” but is constitutive of our actions in the world. He believed that both the actor and the world were therefore dynamic processes always in flux, and that this change was possible because of an actor’s ability to interpret and partake in the social world. He talks a lot about the “gesture,” which he defines as some sort of movement that signals to others the intention of the gesturer. Gestures matter in communication when they elicit the same response in the gesturer as the recipient(s). “Self” is a reflexive term that indicates the ability to experience ourselves as both subject and object. Mead firmly believed that the self is a product of society – social interaction, and he argued that we are objects first to other people, and then we become objects to ourselves by adopting the perspective of these others. The medium for this process to occur is language. Further, social experience determines how much or which part of the self becomes part of communication (227). [I like Mead’s idea of how humans learn to see themselves through alternating social acts: giving/receiving, asking/answering, winning/losing, hiding/seeking. They learn to see themselves as the other sees them. He proposes that this is how children develop – lots of these dialectic games] Mead’s “Me” can be defined as ‘self as object,’ or the social self. He also defines it as the accumulated understanding of “the generalized other,” meaning how one believes the group sees her. In contrast, the “I” is the response to the “Me” – it is more individual and describes one’s impulses. The “I” is the ‘self as subject.’ For Mead, thinking is really the internalized dialogue between the “I” and the “Me.” **Discussion:** Mead believes that people cannot act intelligently or rationally without the ability to see themselves objectively: “Reason cannot become impersonal unless it takes an objective, non-affective attitude toward itself, otherwise we have just consciousness, not //self//-consciousness” (225). What do you think of this? Is Mead’s “objectivity” connoted differently than how we have been using it in political/social science? Along this vein, how does Mead define ‘rational’? “The organization and unification of a social group is identical with the organization and unification of any one of the selves arising within the social process in which that group is engaged, or which it is carrying on” (228). Do you think this is accurate? Do you think individuals so closely mimic the larger group social dynamic in their understanding of themselves? How might these three characteristics relate to Freud’s “Super-ego,” “Ego,” and “Id”?
 * Mead, George Herbert (2010). “The Self, the I and the Me.” In //Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings// 4th Edition, edited by Charles Lemert, 224-229. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.**