On the Self: An existential-phenomenological-hermeneutic study towards a new understanding of the Self.

Abstract

This thesis aims to arrive at a new understanding of the Self by taking an existential-phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to critically analyse several conceptualisations of the Self developed during this century. Through the synthesis of their insights, we articulate our own necessary dimensions of a conceptualisation of Self. In the first chapter, we articulate the basic notions of phenomenology, existential phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as some of their limitations, following which we synthesise their opposite emphases, which we express respectively as those of understanding and explanation, taking place in an overall activity of interpretation within the context of the existential-hermeneutic circle. This synthesis is taken as the basis for a larger one between psychology as a human science and psychology as a natural science. This constitutes an initial contribution of the thesis, from which we establish the selection and evaluation criteria for the ensuing analysis of the conceptualisations of Self. In the second chapter, we present each author's conceptualisation, followed by the critical analysis of its understanding and explanatory aspects. In the third chapter, we articulate the necessary dimensions of a conceptualisation of Self, where an embodied primordial Self, as a conscious-embodied-subject-in-relationship-to-a-world-which-it-interprets, is at the centre of a constellation of secondary Selves, themselves seen as habitual crystallisations of lived experience in the primordial Self's four interrelated dimensions of materiality, interrelationship, interpretation and affection. Other aspects of Self, such as the Self/not-Self distinction, the Self-as-subject/Self-as-object distinction, Self-identity, and Self constancy are also incorporated.