A relational conception of self and its development

A Relational Conception of Self and Its Development Michael F. Mascolo Psychological Studies ISSN 0033-2968 Volume 64 Number Psychol Stud (2019) 64:295-305 DOI 10.1007/s12646-019-00521-2 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India This eoffprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com” 23 Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-019-00521-2 RESEARCH IN PROGRESS A Relational Conception of Self and Its Development Michael F Mascolo1 Received: 18 January 2019 / Accepted: July 2019 / Published online: 16 September 2019 Ó National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2019 Abstract To what we refer when we speak of self? How does self differ from related concepts, such as person, agent, individual or organism? I address these questions by situating the concept of self within a broader model of relational personhood In this conception, persons are relational beings who act on the basis of the meaning that events have for them The experience of self is implicit in the very structure of action As such, the experience of self emerges in early infancy as a reflexive aspect of action and develops within intersubjective encounters with caregivers The capacity to represent self becomes transformed in the second year of life with the emergence of the capacity for symbolism At this point, in intersubjective exchanges with others, consciousness gains the capacity to take itself as its own object of awareness The development of higher-order representations of self is mediated through the discursive use cultural tools—most notably language Over time, children and adults construct valued images of self which come to function as self-defining goals that drive social activity In this way, the quest for a valued identity becomes a defining aspect of the developing person Keywords Development of self Á Embedded person Á Socio-symbiotic construction Introduction Perhaps more than any other psychological concept, the concept of self lends itself to diverse uses and meaning The concept is commonly invoked as a synonym for & Michael F Mascolo mascolom@merrimack.edu Merrimack College, North Andover, USA individual, person, agent, and identity It is used as a hyphenated prefix to a suite of psychological terms, including self-awareness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and so forth To what we refer when we speak of ‘‘self’’? In what follows, I elaborate on the concept of self by situating it within a broader conception of relational personhood In so doing, I elaborate a relational model of psychological functioning In this conception, persons are relational begins who act with a broader person-environment system Within this system, integrative structures of action and experience emerge over time as products of processes that occur both within and between individuals within sociocultural contexts Within this model, the self refers to a type of reflexive awareness of one’s own processes and products As such, it is a reflexive aspect of the process of acting in the world However, even as it functions as an aspect of the developing person, it is also the case that persons are brought into existence through their capacity for self-awareness Although a primary, pre-symbolic and pre-reflective experience of self is already present in infancy, selfawareness develops over time as consciousness gains the capacity to take itself as its own object The capacity to represent the self develops over time in symbol-mediated exchanges that occur between people Within social interactions, children construct representations of ‘‘who I am’’ in relation to others within their social worlds When this occurs, valued representations of self can function as images of ‘‘who I want to be’’ that regulate social activity The desire to live up to valued images of self becomes the most profound of all human motives Although persons function as integrative systems that are distinct from one another, they not function independent of each other Persons are relational beings (Gergen, 2009; Mascolo & Di Bianca-Fasoli, Forthcoming; 123 Author's personal copy 296 Overton, 2013; Shotter, 2017) Persons are not entities unto themselves; they develop through their relations with each other (Fogel, 1993; Mascolo, 2013) One cannot understand relational beings by focusing merely on what occurs within individual actors (Gottlieb, 2002); instead, one must examine how persons come into being through their relations to each other (Carpendale, 2003; Harre´, 2010; Shotter, 2017) From this viewpoint, the most appropriate unit of psychological analysis is not the individual person but instead the person-environment system (Mascolo & Fischer, 2015) A sketch of the person-environment system is represented in Fig The person-environment system is composed of five basic elements: (a) individual action; (b) the objects of action—what actions are directed toward; (c) the actions of others; (d) the use of mediational means—cultural and symbolic tools to mediate individual and joint action (words, cups, computers); and (e) the broader system of sociocultural meanings, practices, and artifacts Within the relational model, a person’s action cannot be understood as the result of any single cause, or even multiple causal processes viewed independent of one another (Gottlieb, 2002; Overton, 2013) Instead, action and experience emerge as products of the ways in which components of the person-environment system influence each other over time (Fogel, 1993; Lewis, 1996) For example, consider the simple act of drinking coffee with a friend In this example, the action is the process of (a) drinking (e.g., grasping, moving the cup to the mouth, etc.); the object of the action (b) the coffee The act of drinking is (d) mediated by the use of cultural tools (e.g., a coffee cup) While interacting with a friend, the drinker draws upon (e) cultural meanings and practices that define the proper ways of drinking coffee in such circumstances (e.g., one sips the coffee slowly; spaces sipping between Fig The person-environment system 123 Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 conversational turns; etc.) In so doing, the drinker adjusts her actions according to those of (c) the other person In this way, control over the act of drinking does not lie exclusively within the drinker herself; it is to be found in the relations between and among the processes that make up the person-environment system (Clark, 1997) Within the person-environment system, social partners coregulate each other’s actions (Fogel, 1993; Semin & Cacioppo, 2009) That is, they continuously adjust their actions to the ongoing and anticipated actions of their social partners This is possible because, unlike in mechanistic communication systems like email or telegraph, in face-to-face interaction, social partners are simultaneously senders and receivers of information As one person talks, the other may not in agreement, express confusion, seem distracted, or even interrupt Social partners modify their messages in the very process of communication In this way, in face-to-face interaction, the message being constructed is not under the exclusive control of the speaker; it is jointly created In so doing, the actions, thoughts, and feelings of the other play a direct role in the construction of action in the self (Fogel, 1993; Mascolo, 2013) Higher-order human actions are mediated processes (Wertsch, 2007) They operate through the use of cultural tools (Semin, 2011; Wertsch & Rupert, 1993) We sip coffee using a cup, cut down a tree with an axe, and communicate using a computer The fundamental of all cultural tools is language Language provides a tool for creating and representing shared meanings that have their origins in social activity (Lau, Lee & Chiu, 2004; Nelson & Shaw, 2002) When we use language, we use shared meanings that have been shaped by long histories of social and cultural activity Language, of course, is not simply a means for communication, but also a vehicle for thinking (e.g., planning) as well as regulating feeling (e.g., using Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 self-talk) and action (e.g., using a map) As processes mediated by cultural tools, higher-order psychological processes have their origins in social rather than merely individual activity (Wertsch, 1998) The Embedded Person Persons function within the larger person-environment system If we want to understand what it means for a person to be an agent, it is necessary to understand what it means to act within the person-environment system The left panel of Fig provides a representation of how individual persons operate within the larger person-environment system From a relational view, acting is a form of relating to the world (Wertsch, 1998) Actions are goaldirected, meaning-mediated operations on the world (Mascolo, Basseches & El-Hashem, 2014).1 Actions are types of control structures where higher-order goals regulate lower-level behavior (Fischer, 1980; Miller, Galanter & Pribram, 1960; Powers, 2005) However, while humans are able to exert conscious control over action, the conscious goals that regulate action are nonetheless organized by cognitive and emotional processes that operate outside of awareness (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019; Tomkins, 1984) In this way, action is a product of processes that are distributed both between and within individuals (Gottlieb, 2002; Clark, 1997) Action as the Control of Experience We normally think of an action as the ability to control behavior From this point of view, when we act, we bring motor behavior into correspondence with our goals and intentions Indeed, any skilled action performed on the world involves control over motor behavior However, when we act, we not typically attempt to control our behavior Instead, behavior functions a means of controlling experience (Powers, 2005) As I write, I am not directing my attention toward the movement of my fingers; indeed, doing so would impede the process of typing Instead, my attention is directed toward what I am writing As I write, I experience a continuously changing image of Action is not a mere synonym for behavior The concept of behavior is often defined as an external result of a set of inner mental processes In contrast, the concept of activity is a holistic one Any action is necessarily a configuration of goals, motives, meanings, and experiences; motor behavior is a part of the goal-directed process of acting As such, to invoke the concept of action is to rejects strong dualisms (Mascolo, 2016; ter Hark, 1990) such as mind/body, mental/ behavioral, inner/outer, public/private, objective/subjective, and so forth As but one aspect of action, motor behavior is the means by which organisms modify their worlds in order to bring current experience into correspondence with their goals, motives and concerns 297 what I want to communicate The act of writing functions to bring my present experience—my current perception of the meanings represented on the computer screen—in line with my goals—my image of what I want to say Thus, the goal of acting is not control of motor action; instead, motor behavior is the means by which we attempt to control experience We act with reference to a sense of futurity—to make our present experience align with desired forms of experience It is helpful to think self-regulation in terms of the metaphor of a control system (Carver, Johnson, Joormann & Scheier, 2015; Mascolo et al., 1997) Control systems operate to regulate some set of external conditions in order to bring them into correspondence with the system’s goals The TOTE unit (Miller, Galanter & Pribram, 1960) provides an illustration of how control systems use negative feedback to regulate their environment TOTE stands for Test ? Operate ? Test ? Exit In a negative feedback system, at any given moment, control involves testing experience (or some input to a system) against some sort of goal, desired image or reference standard As long as a discrepancy exists between the standard and the input, the system operates When experience is brought into correspondence with current goals and references standards, the system exits Figure provides a simple representation of a hierarchical control system Control systems are hierarchically organized; lower-order control systems (TOTE units) are embedded in higher-order control systems For example, imagine a person may seek see himself as a gracious host for his guests (Carver & Scheier, 1981) At the highest level of regulation, the system tests experience against the ongoing goal of being a gracious host—a goal structured by shared knowledge about what it means to act as such a host As long as this goal is unmet, the system operates When guests arrive, the system executes the operation of making coffee—part of what it means to be a good host The operation makes coffee functions simultaneously as both an operation and a goal: while it functions as the operative phase of the higher-order goal of being a gracious host, it functions as the goal of the lower-order system for ‘‘make coffee.’’ As long as the goal of making coffee remains unmet, the system operates Figure shows a series of still lower-order operations for measuring coffee (e.g., scooping the right amount of coffee to be prepared) These control systems regulate a suite of still lower-order operations (not indicated in Fig 2) that ultimately regulated specific motor acts involved in the acts of scooping coffee As lower-order goals are met (e.g., scoop coffee), control is passed to higher-order units (e.g., make coffee) until criteria that define the highest-level goal (be a gracious host) are met At this point, control exits to the next adaptively relevant control structure 123 Author's personal copy 298 Fig The process of hierarchical self-regulation The hierarchy of embedded control structures described in Fig operates at different levels of organization They also operate at different levels of conscious awareness Many control structures are overlearned and automatically deployed without the need for attention or conscious awareness (Hassin, Uleman & Bargh, 2005) Such control structures are evoked in routine situations that not provide adaptive challenges to the person Goals that are conscious are those that correspond to the highest level of adaptive challenge at any given moment (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) For example, if the host found that there was not enough coffee for his guest, attention would immediately shift to the goal of solving this problem Non-routine goals require the slower, more integrative participation of conscious deliberation Emotion and the Unconscious Organization of Conscious Action A large body of theory and research suggests that to understand the origins of our sense of conscious agency, it is necessary to start with processes that are nonconscious Perhaps counter-intuitively, a theory of conscious action must begin with an appreciation of the primacy of emotion and its origins in processes that occur outside of consciousness (Mascolo, in press) For example, on long car trips, drivers often find themselves engrossed in other activities—daydreaming, talking to a friend, and listening to music In so doing, they become unaware of the process of driving the car This phenomenon is known as automatic driving (Charlton & Starkey, 2013) Under such circumstances if an unexpected event occurs—a child wanders 123 Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 into the path of the car—that event immediately becomes conscious How does this occur? How does an ongoing activity, that is not conscious, become conscious? One cannot invoke consciousness as a means to explain how this occurs; consciousness cannot make itself conscious of that which it is not aware It follows that construction of conscious experiences of this sort must necessarily rely on processes that have their origins outside of consciousness (Hassin, Uleman & Bargh, 2005) Unconscious processes that mediate the activation of emotional experience play an important role in organizing conscious awareness This process is shown in the left panel of Fig In any given context, (1) appraisal processes continuously monitor the relation between ongoing circumstances and a person’s goals, motives, and concerns (Moors, Ellsworth, Scherer, & Frijda 2013) However, as demonstrated in the example of automatic driving, the assessments that generate emotion typically operate outside of consciousness (Ruys, Stapel & Aarts, 2011) Unconscious appraisal processes continuously monitor the motivational significance of a vast range of ongoing circumstances Events that have implications for the fate of one’s goals and motives generate (2) affect (feeling) (Roseman, 2004) Affective processes evoke fast-acting (3) actions (operations)—for example, swerving the car—that serve adaptive functions for the person (Frijda, 2004); in this case, functioning to save the life of the child At the same time, affective processes (4) select the motive-relevant circumstances (the child in the road), organize them into (5) consciousness, and amplify their importance for the experiencing organism (Lewis, 1996; Mascolo, in press; Tomkins, 1984) As a slower moving process, consciousness serves to integrate novel, motive-relevant experience at a higher level of organization As conscious goals form in consciousness, (6) lower-order goals and operations are activated, which ultimately result in the modulation of (3) lower-order patterns of motor action (Carver et al., 2015) In this way, emotions arise in situations that have adaptive significance: We feel fear in the presence of danger; sadness in the presence of loss; anger in the presence of moral violations; guilt when we perform a wrongdoing, and so forth In this way, the unconscious activation of emotion is essential for all forms of action—intentional or otherwise (Freeman, 2000) The Development of Self in Infancy Having outlined a model of psychological functioning, the question of understanding what it means to speak of self becomes more manageable A person is as an integrated system who functions within a larger person-environment Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 system (Gottlieb, 2002; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015) Self, however, is not simply a synonym for organism, individual, or even person Self is a form of reflexive awareness (Mascolo & Fischer, 1998) It is a person’s awareness of her own processes and products It follows that it is possible for a person to be conscious without being self-conscious As such, the functioning of the person is prior to the construction of self; if self-awareness is a reflexive experience, there must be something there doing the reflecting and upon which the reflecting is performed (Baker, 2016) However, while this is so, it is also true that the person is brought into existence through the capacity for selfawareness (Schechtman, 1996) In intersubjectively structured exchanges with others, persons construct reflexive representations of ‘‘who I am.’’ Such representations transform the nature and functioning of persons Persons become, in part, who they represent themselves to be, and in particular, who they represent themselves to be in relation to other persons It is helpful to differentiate between primary and secondary forms of action and awareness in development (Butterworth, 1995; Zahavi, 2006) Primary conscious activity involves goal-regulated operations directed toward people and objects in the world As indicated in Fig 3, primary conscious activity is direct, pre-reflective and prelinguistic (Zahavi, 2006); it is the mode of activity that is operative in infancy, and, perhaps, in experiences such as ‘‘flow’’ in which people ‘‘lose themselves’’ in action Secondary reflective awareness arises as consciousness gains the capacity to take itself as its own object of awareness (Butterworth, 1995; Mead, 1934; Zahavi, 2006) This is shown in Fig by the arrow reflecting back onto primary conscious experience This occurs as children gain the capacity for symbol use in the second year of life (Namy, 2005) It is at this point that the reflective capacity for self-awareness emerges in children (Lewis, 2017; Mascolo & Fischer, 1998) This higher-order sense of self is socially mediated through the use of signs and 299 symbols—shared systems of meaning that precede the individual child The Relational Origins of Self Psychologists have sometimes suggested that infants come into the world unable to differentiate self from others (Piaget, 1954) From this view, the task of distinguishing self from other is a developmental achievement There are good reasons to believe that this view of the origins of self is erroneous (Butterworth, 1995; Zahavi, 2006) There are many reasons why this is the case First, the rudiments for distinguishing self from non-self are implicit in the structure of action itself Actions are control structures (see Fig 2) The agentic capacity for regulation is built into the very structure of the earliest of actions, including innate reflexes like sucking a nipple, grasping an object placed in the hand, or looking at an object placed in front of the face There is no additional inner actor that lies behind action and controls it from within; there is only goal-directed action itself The sense of agency is built around the capacity to experience this basic property of ongoing action For example, DeCasper and Carstens (1981) showed that neonates could learn to engage in bursts of non-nutritive sucking in order to produce a period of vocal music After acquiring this skill, neonates showed signs of distress when the relation between sucking and music was changed from contingent to non-contingent This shows that in circumstances that are sensitive to the infant’s limited level of skill, neonates are able to discriminate controllable from uncontrollable circumstances This suggests a pre-reflective capacity to differentiate an agentic sense of self (e.g., the experience of sucking) from non-self (e.g., the music) The finding that neonates become emotionally upset when their capacity to control the music was disrupted suggests a pre-reflective, pre-linguistic sense of agency—an anlage of the later developing linguistic ‘‘I’’—from birth Fig The relational construction of self 123 Author's personal copy 300 Second, infants not come into the world as undifferentiated or self-encased beings Infants enter the world with a primordial capacity to enter into intersubjective relations with others Intersubjective is the capacity to share, coordinate and mutually incorporate experience and action between persons (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019; Matusov, 1996; Trevarthen, 1993; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001; Verhagan, 2008) The early capacity for intersubjectivity is indicated by such capacities as neonatal imitation (Meltzoff, 2013) From birth, infants are able to match certain facial movements modeled by adults (e.g., tongue protrusion; Meltzoff & Moore, 1983) Because infants cannot see their own faces, such findings suggest that infants are born with richly structured systems for mapping seen facial expressions of others to their ownunseen motor acts.2 This suggests that an early capacity to distinguish self from other, and to map expressions of the other onto actions in the self (Meltzoff, 2013) In infancy, the sense of self develops within coregulated intersubjective exchanges with others (Fogel, 1993) For example, by months, infants engage in emotionally charged ‘‘proto-conversations’’ with their caregivers (Rochat, Querido & Striano 1999) Such conversations involve a give-and-take of emotional actions between infants and caregivers An infant’s smile is reciprocated by the mother, which in turn amplifies the infant’s positive emotional feelings (Trevarthen, 1993) As the infant becomes emotionally activated or dysregulated, the mother engages in soothing actions to calm the baby Through such exchanges, as caregivers modulate their infant’s actions and affective states, organize the emotional states that form the basis of the phenomenal experience of self (Trevarthen, 2009) Such early exchanges provide the basis for a sense of agency—within coregulated action, infants learn that they are able to influence their caregiver’s actions (Brazelton, Koslowski & Main, 1974) This is revealed by findings that show that infants become emotionally dysregulated in the contexts where parents are unresponsive to their infant’s overtures (Nagy, Pilling, Watt, Pal, & Orvos, 2017) In primary conscious activity, consciousness is directed toward the objects of acting—the sight of the smiling Evidence supporting such a mechanism comes in the form of the discovery of mirror neurons in macaque monkeys (Kilner & Lemon, 2013) Mirror neurons fire both when a monkey observes a motor action performed by another monkey and when the monkey itself performs the same motor action There is growing evidence supporting the operation of a mirror system in human infants (Ferrari & Coude´, 2018) The existence of something akin to a mirror system provides a way to understand how it is possible for human neonates to perform acts of facial imitation More important, provides a framework for understanding how the capacity for intersubjectivity between infants and their caregivers is possible from the start of life (Iacoboni, 2009) 123 Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 mother, the taste of the milk, or look and feel of the attractive toy In these pre-reflective acts, the infant is able to experience a sense of self (Butterworth, 1995; Zahavi, 2006); however, it is experienced in the process of acting itself In action, the infant experiences bodily activity, feelings that she will later learn to call hunger, anger and happiness, and even a sense of agentive control However, these experiences reside in ongoing process of acting itself—and not yet as explicit objects of reflective awareness The Socio-Symbolic Construction of Higher-Order Selves The secondary, higher-order, reflective concept of self emerges as consciousness gains the capacity to take itself as its own object of awareness (Mascolo & Fischer, 1998, 2015; Mead, 1934; Zahavi, 2006) This is shown in Fig by the arrow reflecting back onto primary conscious experience This occurs as children gain the capacity for symbol use in the second year of life, and use symbol systems as a means for representing the relation between self and others (Rochat & Passos-Ferreira, 2009) It is at this point that the reflective capacity for self-awareness emerges in children This milestone is typically identified with the capacity to recognize the self in a mirror (Lewis, 2017) To assess self-recognition, psychologists place a dab of rouge on an infant’s face and place the child in front of a mirror In the first year of life, infants tend to play with the image in the mirror; they move their bodies and notice the contingency between their movements and the image in the mirror Later in development, infants point to the mark on their face in the mirror However, it is not until 15–18 months that children begin to point to the mark on their own face rather than to the image on the mirror (Kaărtner, Keller, Chaudhary, & Yovsi, 2012; Lewis, 2017; Mascolo & Fischer, 1998) This is the most definitive evidence of self-recognition—the awareness of ‘‘that’s me’’ in the mirror The emergence of self-recognition in the second year of life is a stable and major milestone, as it precedes and predicts a suite of other capacities that rely upon self-awareness, including the use of first-person pronouns, the experience of self-conscious emotions (embarrassment, pride, shame, guilt), the capacity to identify one’s body in space, and similar capacities (see Lewis, 2017, Mascolo & Fischer, 1995, 1998; Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2016) This higher-order reflective sense of self is mediated through the use of signs and symbols—socially shared meanings that precede the individual child In everyday life, in social interactions, caregivers and others members of the community use words to identify children’s Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 experiences and regulate their actions Caregivers address children using phrases like, ‘‘What youwant? ‘‘Are you hungry?’’ ‘‘Don’t get angry!’’ ‘‘What a big girl!’’ ‘‘If you try, you can it!’’ and so forth (Beeghly, Bretherton & Mervis, 1986) As children learn to use the language of their communities, they are able to use words—‘‘I,’’ ‘‘me,’’ ‘‘mine,’’ ‘‘want,’’ ‘‘angry,’’ ‘‘girl,’’ ‘‘try,’’ and so forth, to mediate secondary acts of self-reflection and self-regulation (Racine & Carpendale, 2008) Children gain the capacity to construct representation of self in the context of sign-mediated social activity with members of their communities (Carpendale, 2003) With the development of the capacity to represent self, the process of acting becomes transformed As they emerge, higher-order representations of self can operate as higher-order goals that drive the hierarchical regulation of acting in the world (see Fig 2) The desire to live up to valued images of self is among the most profound of all human motives Such self-conceptions are defined in relation to conceptions of what it means to be a good, valued, worthy person in one’s relationships and communities (Conway, 2018) As such images emerge in development, children begin to experience self-evaluative emotions—pride, shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy, and a range of other emotional experiences (Lewis, 2017; Mascolo & Fischer, 1995, 1998, 2007) To the extent that emotions organize consciousness, self-evaluative emotions play a central role in organizing socio-moral awareness and action Over time, they function as moral guides to behavior (Tangney, 2002) The Meaning of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘Me’’ We have now come full circle, back to the questions with which we started To what we refer when we speak of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘me’’? What does it mean to be an agent? Why does it matter? The Elusive ‘‘I’’ Our sense of agency is organized around the idea that we have (or can have) conscious control of our actions We experience ourselves as able to consciously choose, to create an intention, and to put that intention into action at will In so doing, we think of our capacity to act as something that has its origins in consciousness itself This sense contributes to the idea that we have free will—that what we is ‘‘up to us,’’ so that, having chosen a course of action, we could have just as well done otherwise In this way, ‘‘I’’ have conscious control over when, how and what I and say 301 This everyday view depicts conscious agency as a mysterious entity—an autonomous center of will—a kind of uncaused cause However, as discussed above, the concept of agency need not be a mysterious one What we call agency is a form of self-regulation Self-regulation is a basic property of all living organisms (Bechtel, 2017) Living beings are systems that regulate their internal environments in relation to shifting environmental demands From a biological point of view, there is no need to invoke mysterious causal powers to explain how organisms regulate themselves Hierarchical regulation is built into the biological organization of all animal life, from the single-celled E coli to the self-conscious human (Bich et al., 2016) For humans, the task becomes one of understanding how consciousness operates in conjunction with already existing process of biological regulation (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) A key to addressing this question is the idea psychological processes need not be defined in opposition to biological processes; indeed, psychological processes are emergent biological processes One might define a psychological process as any adaptive process that is mediated by meaning Psychological processes are emergent outcomes of the complexly organized biological processes (Bedau, 2008) However, in the process of emergence, what arises is not a mysterious ‘‘mental’’ sphere that functions independent of its biological constituents What emerges is the capacity for experience, to represent the meaning of events through the structuring experience, and to use those meanings to mediate adaptive action in the world (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) Consciousness functions as a higher-order tool of biological adaptation It is a higher-order property of the biological process of life (Thompson, 2007) From this view, there are two broad classes of meanings we invoke when we speak of ‘‘I’’—‘‘I’’ in the broad sense and ‘‘I’’ in the narrow sense The broad sense involves the use of ‘‘I’’ to refer to the speaker as the person who speaks—that is, as an integrative self-organizing unity— the totality of the individual person appearing before you (Shoemaker, 1968) To use ‘‘I’’ in this way identifies the self with the person as an agentic whole—one who is capable of speaking, acting, experiencing, having dignity, and so forth This use allows us to speak ourselves as agents without identifying ourselves with consciousness a necessary source of our agency In its narrow sense, we use ‘‘I’’ to identify ourselves with the regulating functions of consciousness itself In so doing, we identify ourselves with our conscious intentions, which function as higherorder goals that regulate lower-order operations This use of ‘‘I,’’ however, comes with a caveat: like all conscious content, conscious goals have their origins in preconscious processes As such, while we may identify ourselves as 123 Author's personal copy 302 conscious agents, we must renounce all claims to be uncaused causes of our actions From ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘Me’’ and Back Again In primary conscious activity, the experience of agency is implicit in the process of acting In secondary conscious activity, consciousness activity loops back onto itself and takes itself as its own object As consciousness (‘‘I’’) loops back and makes contact with itself, ‘‘I’’ become conscious of ‘‘me.’’ The sense of self as an object of awareness is born It follows that we can never catch ourselves as ‘‘I’’ in the moment of conscious activity I become aware of my present ‘‘I’’ only as a reflected object of awareness I become aware of the ‘‘I’’ of the present only when it becomes ‘‘me’’—that is, as an object of the past that has been retained in memory (Deikman, 1996; Mead, 1934; Thompson, 2007) When I speak of myself as ‘‘me,’’ I invoke a concept that integrates the sense of conscious agency with the awareness of the self as an object of reflection This integration is captured in the contrast between how one identifies one’s name in English and in French In English, I say, ‘‘My name is Michael.’’ In French, this expression becomes, ‘‘Je m’appelle Michel’’—literally, ‘‘I call myself Michael.’’ In English, I experience my name as static part of ‘‘who I am’’; in French, it turns into an agentic process—a doing Our sense of both ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘me’’ are higher-order reflections—constructed at different moments of conscious action—which ultimately become flip sides of the same representational process of reflecting and regulating (Mead, 1934) In this way, while the present ‘‘I’’ passes into memory, it is not forgotten With each passing moment, the experience of the just past ‘‘I’’ becomes consolidated into an increasingly integrated sense of ‘‘me.’’ In this way, the self develops iteratively over time Thus, my sense of self as develops as a series of reflexive representations—an increasingly differentiated and integrated theory of ‘‘who I am’’ in relation to others in my social world Of course, I not construct my sense of who I am by myself I so through the medium of language (Wertsch, Tulviste & Hagstrom, 1993) However, far from being a constraining force, the construction of self through language is an emancipating process; it allows us to go beyond the information given in our perceptual life (Bruner, 1973) Language is generative: Using a finite number of basic units (words), one can construct an infinite number of meanings (Anderson, 2007) It follows that, using words in discursive activity, persons can construct their selves in many different ways While we cannot escape from the symbolic meanings that organize our worlds, neither are we slaves to them In the course of cultivating a self, we modify social meanings as we accept 123 Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 them (Rogoff, 1993); retain some values while rejecting others—and otherwise resist the pull of normativity even as we are inescapably defined through it (Goffman, 1961) If this were not so, there would be no way that either persons or cultures could develop The Role of Self in the Relational Constitution of Personhood From a relational perspective, one might define the persons as self-conscious, symbol-using animals who, by virtue their capacity for intersubjectivity, act with reference to shared systems of meaning and value (Mascolo, 2017) Perhaps the most central features of personhood involve the capacities for language (Burke, 1966) and intersubjectivity (Verhagan, 2008) Tomasello (2019) has suggested that the difference between humans and other primates lies in the nature of human intersubjectivity While chimps are able to understand each other’s goals and intentions, humans have the capacity for shared intentionality—the ability to form joint goals in order to participate in genuine acts of collaboration (Tomasello & Herrmann, 2010) Using language to mediate acts of collaboration, humans are able to construct and promulgate stable systems of shared meaning—the basis of culture Within our cultures, through our intersubjective relations with others, we construct selves—valued representations of ‘‘who I am’’ and ‘‘who I should be.’’ In this way, through our collaborative capacity to construct selves, human organisms become persons References Anderson, H (2007) A postmodern umbrella: Language and knowledge as relational and generative, and inherently transforming In H Anderson & D Gehart (Eds.), Collaborative therapy: Relationships and conversations that make a difference (pp 7–19) New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group Baker, L R (2016) Making sense of ourselves: Self-narratives and personal identity Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 7–15 Bechtel, W (2017) Top-down causation in biology and neuroscience: Control hierarchies In M P Paoletti & F Orilia (Eds.), Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation (pp 203–224) London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Bedau, M A (2008) Downward causality and autonomy in weak emergence In M A Bedau & P Humphreys (Eds.), Emergence: Contemporary readings in philosophy and science (pp 155–188) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Beeghly, M., Bretherton, I., & Mervis, B (1986) Mothers’ internal state language to toddlers British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4(3), 247–261 Bich, L., Mossio, M., Ruiz-Mirazo, K., & Moreno, A (2016) Biological regulation: Controlling the system from within Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 Biology and Philosophy, 31, 237 https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10539-015-9497-8 Brazelton, T B., Koslowski, B., & Main, M (1974) The origins of reciprocity: The early mother-infant interaction In M Lewis & L A Rosenblum (Eds.), The effect of the infant on its caregiver London: Wiley Bruner, J (1973) Beyond the information given: Studies in the psychology of knowing New York: W W Norton & Co Burke, K (1966) Language as symbolic action Berkeley, CA: University of California Press Butterworth, G (1995) The self as object of consciousness in infancy In P Rochat (Ed.), The self in infancy: Theory and research (pp 35–51) Amsterdam: Elsevier Carpendale, J I M (2003) Constructing an understanding of mind: The development of children’s social understanding within social interaction Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27(1), 79–151 Carver, C S., Johnson, S L., Joormann, J., & Scheier, M F (2015) An evolving view of the structure of self-regulation In G H E Gendolla, M Tops, & S L Koole (Eds.), Handbook of biobehavioral approaches to self-regulation (pp 9–23) New York, NY: Springer Carver, C S., & Scheier, M F (1981) Attention and self-regulation: A control-theory approach to human behavior New York: Springer Charlton, S G., & Starkey, N J (2013) Driving on familiar roads: Automaticity and inattention blindness Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 19, 121–133 Clark, A (1997) Being there: Putting brain, body and world together again Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Conway, P (2018) The core of morality is the moral self In K Gray & J Graham (Eds.), Atlas of moral psychology (pp 149–164) New York, NY: The Guilford Press DeCasper, A J., & Carstens, A A (1981) Contingencies of stimulation: Effects on learning and emotion in neonates Infant Behavior & Development, 4(1), 19–35 Deikman, A (1996) ‘I’ = awareness Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, 350–356 Ferrari, P F., & Coude´, G (2018) Mirror neurons, embodied emotions, and empathy In K Z Meyza & E Knapska (Eds.), Neuronal correlates of empathy: From rodent to human (pp 67–77) San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press Fischer, K W (1980) A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills Psychological Review, 87, 477–531 Fogel, A (1993) Developing through relationships Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Freeman, W (2000) Emotion is essential for all intentional action In M Lewis & I Granic (Eds.), Emotion and self-organization (pp 209–235) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Frijda, N H (2004) Emotions and Action In A S R Manstead, N Frijda, & A Fischer (Eds.), Feelings and emotions: The Amsterdam symposium (pp 158–173) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Gergen, K J (2009) Relational being: Beyond self and community New York, US: Oxford University Press Goffman, E (1961) Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates Garden City, NY: Anchor Books Gottlieb, G (2002) From gene to organism: The developing individual as an emergent, interactional, hierarchical system In M H Johnson, Y Munakata, & R O Gilmore (Eds.), Brain development and cognition: A reader (2nd ed., pp 36–49) Malden: Blackwell Harre´, R (2010) Public sources of the personal mind: Social constructionism in context In S R Kirschner & J Martin (Eds.), The sociocultural turn in psychology: The contextual emergence 303 of mind and self (pp 31–44) New York, NY: Columbia University Press Hassin, R R., Uleman, J S., & Bargh, J A (2005) Non-conscious control and the case for implicit working memory In R R Hassin, J S Uleman, & J A Bargh (Eds.), The new unconscious New York, NY: Oxford University Press Iacoboni, M (2009) The problem of other minds is not a problem: Mirror neurons and intersubjectivity In J A Pineda (Ed.), Mirror neuron systems: The role of mirroring processes in social cognition (pp 121–133) Totowa, NJ: Humana Press Kaărtner, J., Keller, H., Chaudhary, N., & Yovsi, R D (2012) The development of mirror self-recognition in different sociocultural contexts Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 77(4), 7–8 Kilner, J M., & Lemon, R N (2013) What we know currently about mirror neurons Current Biology, 23, R1057–R1062 Lau, I Y.-M., Lee, S.-I., & Chiu, C (2004) Language, cognition, and reality: Constructing shared meanings through communication In M Schaller & C S Crandall (Eds.), The psychological foundations of culture (pp 77–100) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers Lewis, M D (1996) Self-organising cognitive appraisals Cognition and Emotion, 10(1), 1–25 Lewis, M D (2017) Selfhood In B Hopkins, E Geangu, & S Linkenauger (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of child development (2nd ed., pp 487–491) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Mascolo, M F (in press) One person, many selves: A relationaldevelopmental conception of self and personality development In M F Mascolo & T Bidell (Eds.), Handbook of integrative psychological development Routledge/Taylor & Francis (To appear) Mascolo, M F (2013) Developing through relationships: An embodied coactive systems framework In R Lerner & J Benson (Eds.), Embodiment and epigenesis: Theoretical and methodological issues in understanding the role of biology within the relational developmental system Advances in child development and behavior (Vol 45, pp 185–222) New York: Elsevier Mascolo, M F (2016) Beyond subjectivity and objectivity: The intersubjective foundations of psychological science Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 50, 185–195 Mascolo, M F (2017) How objectivity undermines the study of personhood: Toward an intersubjective epistemology for psychological science New Ideas in Psychology, 33, 41–48 Mascolo, M F., & Di Bicanca-Fasoli (forthcoming) The relational origins of morality and its development In M F Mascolo, & T Bidell (Eds.), Handbook of integrative psychological development London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Mascolo, M F., Basseches, M., & El-Hashem, A (2014) Toward an integrated constructionist psychology: The coactive construction of meaning In J Raskin, S Bridges, & J Kahn (Eds.), Studies in meaning New York: Pace University Press Mascolo, M F., Craig-Bray, L., & Neimeyer, R (1997) The construction of meaning and action in development and psychotherapy: An epigenetic systems approach In G Neimeyer & R Neimeyer (Eds.), Advances in personal construct psychology, Vol 4, (pp 3–38) Greenwich, CT: JAI Press Mascolo, M F., & Fischer, K W (1995) Developmental transformations in appraisals for pride, guilt and shame In K W Fischer & J P Tangney (Eds.), Self-conscious emotions: Shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride (pp 64–113) New York: Guilford Mascolo, M F., & Fischer, K W (1998) The development of self through the coordination of component systems In M Ferrari & R Sternberg (Eds.), Self-awareness: Its nature and development (pp 332–384) New York: Guilford 123 Author's personal copy 304 Mascolo, M F., & Fischer, K W (2007) The co-development of self-awareness and self-evaluative emotions across the toddler years In C A Brownell & C B Kopp (Eds.), Transitions in early socioemotional development: The toddler years (pp 66–99) New York, NY: Guilford Press Mascolo, M F., & Fischer, K W (2015) Dynamic development of thinking, feeling and acting In W Overton & P Molennar (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science (Theory and Method) (Vol 1, pp 113–161) New York: Wiley Mascolo, M F., & Kallio, E (2019) Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency Philosophical Psychology, 32, 437–462 Matusov, E (1996) Intersubjectivity without agreement Mind, Culture & Activity, 3, 25–45 Mead, G H (1934) Mind, self and society Chicago: University of Chicago Press Meltzoff, A N (2013) Origins of social cognition: Bidirectional selfother mapping and the ‘like-me’ hypothesis In M R Banaji, S A Gelman, M R Banaji, & S A Gelman (Eds.), Navigating the social world: What infants, children, and other species can teach us (pp 139–144) New York, NY: Oxford University Press Meltzoff, A N., & Moore, M K (1983) Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures Child Development, 54, 702–709 Miller, G A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K H (1960) Plans and the structure of behavior New York, NY: Henry Holt Moors, A., Ellsworth, P C., Scherer, K R., & Frijda, N H (2013) Appraisal theories of emotion: State of the art and future development Emotion Review, 5(2), 119–124 Nagy, E., Pilling, K., Watt, R., Pal, A., & Orvos, H (2017) Neonates’ responses to repeated exposure to a still face PLoS ONE, 12(8), e0181688 Namy, L L (Ed.) (2005) Symbol use and symbolic representation: Developmental and comparative perspectives Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers Nelson, K., & Shaw, L K (2002) Developing a socially shared symbolic system In E Amsel & J P Byrnes (Eds.), Language, literacy, and cognitive development: The development and consequences of symbolic communication (pp 27–57) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers Overton, W F (2013) A new paradigm for developmental science: Relationism and relational-developmental systems Applied Developmental Science, 17(2), 94–107 Piaget, J (1954) The construction of reality in the child New York: Basic Books Powers, W T (2005) Behavior: The control of perception (2nd ed.) New Canaan, CT: Benchmark Press Racine, T P., & Carpendale, J M (2008) The embodiment of mental states In W F Overton, U Muăller, J L Newman, W F Overton, U Muăller, & J L Newman (Eds.), Developmental perspectives on embodiment and consciousness (pp 159–190) New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group/Lawrence Rochat, P., & Passos-Ferreira, C (2009) From imitation to reciprocation and mutual recognition In J A Pineda (Ed.), Mirror neuron systems: The role of mirroring processes in social cognition (pp 191–212) Totowa, NJ: Humana Press Rochat, P., Querido, J G., & Striano, T (1999) Emerging sensitivity to the timing and structure of proto-conversation in early infancy Developmental Psychology, 35(4), 950–957 Rogoff, B (1993) Children’s guided participation and participatory appropriation in sociocultural activity In R H Wozniak & K W Fischer (Eds.), The Jean Piaget symposium series Development in context: Acting and thinking in specific environments (pp 121–153) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc Roseman, I J (2004) Appraisals, rather than unpleasantness or muscle movements, are the primary determinants of specific emotions Emotion, 4(2), 145–150 123 Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 Ruys, K I., Stapel, D A., & Aarts, H (2011) From (unconscious) perception to emotion: A global-to-specific unfolding view of emotional responding In I Nyklicˇek, A Vingerhoets, & M Zeelenberg (Eds.), Emotion regulation and well-being (pp 49–65) New York, NY: Springer Schechtman, M (1996) The constitution of selves Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press Semin, G R (2011) Culturally situated linguistic ecologies and language use: Cultural tools at the service of representing and shaping situated realities In M J Gelfand, C Chiu, & Y Hong (Eds.), Advances in culture and psychology (Vol 1, pp 217–249) New York, NY: Oxford University Press Semin, G R., & Cacioppo, J T (2009) From embodied representation to co-regulation In J A Pineda (Ed.), Mirror neuron systems: The role of mirroring processes in social cognition (pp 107–120) Totowa, NJ: Humana Press Shoemaker, S (1968) Self-reference and self-awareness Journal of Philosophy, 65, 555–567 Shotter, J (2017) Persons as dialogical–hermeneutical–relational beings—New circumstances ‘call out’ new responses from us New Ideas in Psychology, 44, 34–40 Tangney, J P (2002) Self-conscious emotions: The self as a moral guide In A Tesser, D A Stapel, & J V Wood (Eds.), Self and motivation: Emerging psychological perspectives (pp 97–117) Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Taumoepeau, M., & Ruffman, T (2016) Self-awareness moderates the relation between maternal mental state language about desires and children’s mental state vocabulary Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 144, 114–129 ter Hark, M (1990) Beyond the inner and the outer: Wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Thompson, E (2007) Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press Tomasello, M (2019) Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny Cambridge, MA: Harvard Tomasello, M., & Herrmann, E (2010) Ape and human cognition: What’s the difference? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 3–8 Tomkins, S S (1984) Affect theory In K R Scherer & P Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp 163–195) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Trevarthen, C (1993) The self born in intersubjectivity: The psychology of an infant communicating In U Neisser (Ed.), The perceived self: Ecological and interpersonal sources of selfknowledge (pp 121–173) New York: Cambridge University Press Trevarthen, C (2009) The functions of emotion in infancy: The regulation and communication of rhythm, sympathy, and meaning in human development In D Fosha, D J Siegel, M F Solomon, D Fosha, D J Siegel, & M F Solomon (Eds.), The healing power of emotion: Affective neuroscience, development & clinical practice (pp 55–85) New York, NY: W W Norton & Co Trevarthen, C., & Aitken, K J (2001) Infant intersubjectivity: Research, theory, and clinical applications Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(1), 3–48 Verhagan, A (2008) Intersubjectivity and the architecture of the language system In J Zlatev, T P Racine, C Sinha, E Itkonen, J Zlatev, T P Racine, et al (Eds.), The shared mind: Perspectives on intersubjectivity (pp 307–331) Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company Wertsch, J V (1998) Mind as action New York, NY: Oxford University Press Wertsch, J V (2007) Mediation In H Daniels, M Cole, & J V Wertsch (Eds.), The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky (pp 178–192) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press Author's personal copy Psychol Stud (July–September 2019) 64(3):295–305 Wertsch, J V., & Rupert, L J (1993) The authority of cultural tools in a sociocultural approach to mediated agency Cognition and Instruction, 11(3–4), 227–239 Wertsch, J V., Tulviste, P., & Hagstrom, F (1993) A sociocultural approach to agency In E A Forman, N Minick, & C A Stone (Eds.), Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children’s development (pp 336–356) New York, NY: Oxford University Press 305 Zahavi, D (2006) Subjectivity and selfhood Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations 123 ... References Anderson, H (2007) A postmodern umbrella: Language and knowledge as relational and generative, and inherently transforming In H Anderson & D Gehart (Eds.), Collaborative therapy: Relationships... coffee using a cup, cut down a tree with an axe, and communicate using a computer The fundamental of all cultural tools is language Language provides a tool for creating and representing shared... 97–117) Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Taumoepeau, M., & Ruffman, T (2016) Self- awareness moderates the relation between maternal mental state language about desires and children’s