“Write short note: Mead’s notion of self.” (2008)
For George Herbert Mead (Mind, Self and Society, 1934), the self is neither a biological given nor a private inner essence. The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there at birth. It is a social process: the capacity to become an object to oneself by taking the attitudes of others.
Defining features
- Reflexivity. The self can praise, blame and plan for itself.
- Language as its basis. A significant symbol calls out in the speaker the same response it calls out in the listener.
- Role-taking. The person imaginatively occupies the standpoint of another and views their own conduct from there.
How the self develops
| Phase | Illustration | What the self gains |
|---|---|---|
| Imitation | A toddler copies a sibling swinging a bat | No self yet, only mimicry |
| Play | The child “is” the bowler, then the umpire, one role at a time | The standpoint of particular significant others |
| Game | In a gully cricket match, a fielder must anticipate the batter, bowler, wicketkeeper and the rules all at once | An organised view of the whole team |
| Generalized other | The unwritten code of “playing fair” is taken in | A unified self governed by community attitudes |
Two phases: the “I” and the “me”
- The “me” is the organised attitudes of others that a person has taken in: the conventional, socialised self and the channel of social control.
- The “I” is the spontaneous response to the “me”. It is known only in memory after it acts, and it is the source of initiative and change.
- The self is the ongoing conversation between the two, a process rather than a thing.
Illustration: the making of a civil servant
A newly selected officer at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, gradually builds an official “me”. Trainers’ and citizens’ expectations become an internalised generalized other of neutrality and procedure. Yet the officer who improvises a new grievance-redress practice in a district is expressing the “I”. That innovation later becomes part of the service’s routine “me”.
A current echo is National Education Policy 2020. It makes the foundational stage (ages 3–8) play-based and activity-based, recognising, much as Mead argued, that play and games are how children learn to take roles.
Assessment
- Contribution. Mead made the self thoroughly social without making it passive, and laid the ground for Herbert Blumer‘s symbolic interactionism.
- Contrast with Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley’s looking-glass self (1902) rests on imagined judgements, whereas Mead’s rests on the organised attitudes of the community.
- Limits. The generalized other assumes consensus. For a Dalit child facing caste contempt, the “others” are unequal and hostile. The “I” is also hard to observe, and unconscious motives, central for Sigmund Freud, are left out.
Conclusion
Mead’s notion of self explains how individuals carry society within themselves yet remain able to change it. The self is born in interaction, organised in the game and kept open by the “I”; its neglect of power limits its scope, not its insight.