'I' and the 'me'
Encyclopedia
The 'I' and the 'me' are terms central to the social philosophy
Social philosophy
Social philosophy is the philosophical study of questions about social behavior . Social philosophy addresses a wide range of subjects, from individual meanings to legitimacy of laws, from the social contract to criteria for revolution, from the functions of everyday actions to the effects of...

 of George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...

, one of the key influences on the development of the branch of sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 called symbolic-interactionism. The terms refer to the psychology of the individual, where in Mead's understanding, the "me" is the socialized aspect of the person, the "I"is the active aspect of the person.

One might usefully 'compare Mead's "I" and "me", respectively, with Sartre's "choice" and "the situation
Situation (Sartre)
One of the first times in which Jean-Paul Sartre discussed the concept of Situation was in his 1943 Being and Nothingness, where he famously said that...

". But Mead himself matched up the "me" with Freud's "censor", and the "I" with his "ego
EGO
See also Egoism Ego is a Latin word meaning "I", cognate with the Greek "Εγώ " meaning "I", often used in English to mean the "self", "identity" or other related concepts.It may also refer to:...

"; and this is psychologically apt'.

Characteristics

The "Me" is what is learned in interaction with others and (more generally) with the environment: other people's attitudes, once internalized in the self, constitute the Me. This includes both knowledge about that environment (including society), but also about who the person is: their sense of self. "What the individual is for himself is not something that he invented. It is what his significant others
Significant Others
Significant Others is an American sitcom that aired on Bravo for two seasons in 2004. Following four couples from various backgrounds in and out of therapy, it focused on issues of adultery, parenthood, impending parenthood, and the chore of behaving like an adult...

 have come to ...treat him as being." This is because people learns to see who they are (man or woman, old or young, etc.) by observing the responses of others themselves or their actions. If others respond to a person as (for instance) a woman, the person develops a sense of herself indeed as a woman.

At the same time, 'the "Me" disciplines the "I" by holding it back from breaking the law of the community'. It is thus very close to the way in a man Freud's 'ego-censor, the conscience...arose from the critical influence of his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and the innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his environment - his fellow-men - and public opinion'. It is 'the attitude of the other in one's own organism, as controlling the thing that he is going to do'.

By contrast, 'the "I" is the response of the individual to the attitude of the community'. The "I" acts creatively, though within the context of the me. Mead notes that "It is only after we have acted that we know what we have done...what we have said." People, he argues, are not automations. They do not blindly follow rules. They construct a response on the basis of what they have learned, the "me". Mead highlighted accordingly those values that attach particularly to the "I" rather than to the me, "...which cannot be calculated and which involve a reconstruction of the society, and so of the 'me' which belongs to that society." Taken together, the "I" and the "me" form the person or the self
Self (philosophy)
The philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others. There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the...

 in Mead's social philosophy.

Fusion

Mead explored what he called 'the fusion of the "I" and the "me" in the attitudes of religion, patriotism, and team work', noting what he called the "peculiar sense of exaltation" that belongs to them. He also considered that 'the idea of the fusion of the "I" and the "me" gives a very adequate explanation of this exaltation...in the aesthetic experience'.

In everyday life, however, 'a complete fusion of the "I" and the "me" may not be a good thing...it is a dynamic sort of balance between the "I" and the "me" that is required'.

Conventionality

When there is a predominance of the "me" in the personality, 'we speak of a person as a conventional individual; his ideas are exactly the same as those of his neighbours; he is hardly more than a "me" under the circumstances' - "...the shallow, brittle, conformist kind of personality..." that is "all persona
Persona (psychology)
The Persona, for Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world - 'a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual'....

, with its excessive concern for what people think." The alternative—and in many ways Mead's ideal—was the person who has a definite personality, who replies to the organized attitude in a way that makes a significant difference. With such a person, the I is the most important phase of the experience.

Dissociation

Mead recognised that it is normal for an individual to have 'all sorts of selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions', but also that it was possible for 'a tendency to break up the personality' to appear: 'Two separate "me's" and "I's", two different selves, result...the phenomenon of dissociation
Dissociation
Dissociation is an altered state of consciousness characterized by partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s normal conscious or psychological functioning. Dissociation is most commonly experienced as a subjective perception of one's consciousness being detached from...

 of personality'.

Literary examples

Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

 'marks off the impulsive "I", the natural, existential aspect of the self, from critical sanction. It is the cultured self, the "me", in Mead's terms, that needs re-mediation'.

See also

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