Harry Kempen
In the 1990s, Kempen and Hubert Hermans developed a new approach in cultural psychology around the concept of the dialogical self. In 1993, they published the seminal work "The dialogical self: Meaning as movement", and published several articles in "American Psychologist", "Journal of Personality" and "Theory & Psychology". Despite their success Kempen suffered from depression. In 2000, he died in Nijmegen four days before his retirement from the Radboud University. At the university he is remembered by as the "personification of cultural psychology."Articles, a selection:
Labeling theory
One of the founders of social interactionism, George Herbert Mead focused on the internal processes of how the mind constructs one's self-image. In "Mind, Self, and Society" (1934), he showed how infants come to know "persons" first and only later come to know "things". According to Mead, thought is both a "social" and "pragmatic" process, based on the model of two persons discussing how to solve a problem. Mead's central concept is the self, the part of an individual's personality composed of self-awareness and self-image. Our self-image is, in fact, constructed of ideas about what we think others are thinking about us. While we make fun of those who visibly talk to themselves, they have only failed to do what the rest of us do in keeping the internal conversation to ourselves. Human behavior, Mead stated, is the result of meanings created by the social interaction of conversation, both real and imaginary.