Lesson 6: The Material Self PDF

**LESSON 6: THE MATERIAL SELF** The material self refers to tangible objects, people, or places that carry the designation my or mine. Our sense of self is not limited to our bodies. It includes other people (my children), pets (my dog), possessions (my car), places (my home town), and the products...

**LESSON 6: THE MATERIAL SELF** The material self refers to tangible objects, people, or places that carry the designation my or mine. Our sense of self is not limited to our bodies. It includes other people (my children), pets (my dog), possessions (my car), places (my home town), and the products of our labors (my painting). It is not the physical entities themselves, however, that comprise the material self. Rather, it is our psychological ownership of them (Scheibe, 1985). *According to **William James:*** - The Material self is about our bodies, clothes, immediate family, and home - The body is the innermost part of *the material Self* in each of us; and certain parts of the body seem more intimately ours than the rest.  - The clothes come next. The old saying that the human person is composed of three parts - soul, body and clothes - is more than a joke. We so appropriate our clothes and identify ourselves with them that there are few of us who, if asked to choose between having a beautiful body clad in raiment perpetually shabby and unclean, and having an ugly and blemished form always spotlessly attired, would not hesitate a moment before making a decisive reply. - Next, our immediate family is a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our very selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If they are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood in their place. - Our home comes next. Its scenes are part of our life; its aspects awaken the tenderest feelings of affection; and we do not easily forgive the stranger who, in visiting it, finds fault with its arrangements or treats it with contempt.  All these different things are the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important practical interests of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of \[p. 293\] an ornamental sort, to cherish parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own which we may live in and \'improve.\' *How can we tell whether an entity is part of the self? (James)* - James believed we could make this determination by examining our emotional investment in the entity. If we respond in an emotional way when the entity is praised or attacked, the entity is likely to be part of the self. *In its widest possible sense, \... a man's Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down,---not necessarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all. (pp. 291-292)* - Another way to determine whether something is part of the extended self is to see how we act towards it. If we lavish attention on the entity and labor to enhance or maintain it, we can infer that the entity is part of the self. *\[All of the components of the material self\] are the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important practical interests of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish parents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own which we may live in and 'improve.' An equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the collections thus made become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts of our empirical selves. The parts of our wealth most intimately ours are those which are saturated with our labor. \... and although it is true that a part of our depression at the loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go without certain goods that we expected the possessions to bring in their train, yet in every case there remains, over and above this, a sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness, which is a psychological phenomenon by itself. (p. 293)* - In addition to underscoring the important role motivation plays in identifying what is self from what is not, James also makes an interesting point here about the nature of things that become part of the self. These possessions, James argued, are not simply valued for what they provide; they are also prized because they become part of us. "Not only the people but the places and things I know enlarge my Self in a sort of metaphoric way", James wrote (p. 308). - A good deal of research supports James's intuitions regarding the close connection between possessions and the self (see Belk, 1988). First, people spontaneously mention their possessions when asked to describe themselves (Gordon, 1968). People also amass possessions. Young children, for example, are avid collectors. They have bottle-cap collections, rock collections, shell collections, and so forth. These collections are not simply treasured for their material value (which is often negligible); instead, they represent important aspects of self. The tendency to treat possessions as part of the self continues throughout life, perhaps explaining why so many people have difficulty discarding old clothes or possessions that have long outlived their usefulness. - Possessions serve a symbolic function; they help people define themselves. The clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the manner in which we adorn our homes and offices signal to ourselves (and others) who we think we are and how we wish to be regarded. - Possessions also extend the self in time. Most people take steps to ensure that their letters, photographs, possessions, and mementos are distributed to others at the time of their death. Although some of this distribution reflects a desire to allow others to enjoy the utilitarian value of these artifacts, this dispersal also has a symbolic function: People seek immortality by passing their possessions on to the next generation. - People's emotional responses to their possessions also attest to their importance to the self. - Many people who lose possessions in a natural disaster go through a grieving process similar to the process people go through when they lose a person they love (McLeod, 1984, cited in Belk, 1988).