The Origins of the Social Self

Issue 81: We describe the origins of the social self idea and the APA William James Book Award (which we received last week)

This month, we attended the American Psychological Association annual convention in Washington, DC and gave a joint talk on THE POWER OF US. This is the primary book award for the society: “The William James Award is intended to honor and publicize a recent book published within the last two years that brings together diverse subfields of psychology and related disciplines. This work should provide a creative synthesis of theory, fact and themes that serve to unify or integrate the field.”

William James was a leading thinker of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers of the United States, and widely considered the "Father of American psychology". In 1890 wrote the landmark book “The Principles of Psychology where he developed the a concept of the social self that became the core theme of our book. (You can read James’ ideas here).

William James divided the "Me" part of self into: a material, a social, and a spiritual self. For him, the social self is who we are i…