Psychology in India, Volume 2

2

Social Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity

Arvind K. Mishra, A. Bimol Akoijam, and Girishwar Misra

INTRODUCTION

Most, if not all, modern enquiries concerning human affairs implicate a notion of self. The descriptive and prescriptive aspects of the world within and without articulated by these enquiries in the realms of politics, economy, and morality or ethics, implicitly or explicitly, invoke and produce justifications for some idea of what it is to be a human individual. For instance, all forms of psychotherapy are not only premised upon some notion of what is to be a human individual, or a self, but their praxis also reproduce and reinforce the same. At a larger plane, the crucial and dominant perspectives that construe and guide ...