Abstract
In its original formulation, the interactionist model of the self offered a limited but useful description of the relations between mind, body and society. It was useful because it referred to observable and communal processes which shaped mind. It permitted a synthesis of the different phases of social and individual process into one master scheme. The model was limited because it did not pretend to embrace private, subjective experience. It was not comprehensive or phenomenological. Rather it adhered to the behaviourist principles which Mead had advanced. In that guise, there has been one other major limitation which is not commonly recognised. By focusing on one ideal-typical self as a general process, there has been a tendency to portray all selves as undifferentiated and interchangeable. Further, the organic anchorage of the self has been lost in the writings of interactionism. The self has consequently become a rational, distant observer of social scenes rather than a varied participant which alters with them. It is fundamentally outside the interpretative scope of sociology although it represents sociology’s chief object. In its phenomenologically revised form, the self has also lost much of the practical utility which it once enjoyed. It has, become a somewhat mysterious process whose problematic qualities are little appreciated by the revisionist interactionists. Although nothing private is excluded from analytic survey, few directions are provided to guide descriptions of the enlarged self.
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Notes
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© 1979 Paul Rock
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Rock, P. (1979). Problematic Aspects of the Interactionist Idea of Self. In: The Making of Symbolic Interactionism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04084-1_5
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