Questions about “The Self” In recent times there has been a lot
of discussion with regard to social psychology constructs such
as self-esteem, self-determination and self-affirmation. Due to
rapidly changing societies and new insights into cognitive
processes of memory formation some old theories of self-
psychology have recently been challenged. For example Heine,
Lehman, Markus and Kitayama (1999) postulated that self-esteem,
conceptualized as positive self-regard, is not a universal value
and should be replaced by the concept of self-enhancement.
However, all those theories are closely connected to the concept
of self, which in itself still remains unclear. Since there are
many different interpretation of the self, many discussions end
in despair, each side holding on to their specific
conceptualization of the self, which are not interchangeable.
But can there be any definition that fits them all? Does
“talking about myself” and “exercising control over myself”
relate to the same objects? Terms such as self