Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-110).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed February 25, 2010). PDF text: 225 p. ; 2 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3386555. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.S.)--Northern Illinois University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [82]-85). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed January 5, 2010). PDF text: iv, 80 p. : ill. ; 613 K. UMI publication number: AAT 3359349. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

M.Phil. / In the changing world of today, individuals experience a lack of meaning and direction in their lives. Personal leadership is an approach that enables individuals to achieve a deeper self-insight and form a more distinct vision of their future. The objective of this study was to investigate the contribution of self-awareness to personal leadership. With a view to gain a better understanding of self-awareness, a word and concept analysis of self-awareness was conducted in Chapter two by means of dictionary explanations as well as consulting viewpoints of experts from different perspectives. The relevant information gleaned from psychology and sociology was categorized to describe the ontological (essential nature), teleological (purpose), sociological (social nature) and methodological (methods) dimensions of self-awareness. Based on this analysis, self-awareness can be described as a psychological state or condition of attending to one's physical, spiritual, emotional and/or mental qualities by means of reflection, introspection and/or inner speech. It is thus an on-going process of seeing things both as they are and as they could be, as well as to form a perception of what is real. Furthermore, it was determined that self-awareness provides the key to a person's being, as it enables one to achieve: • self-knowledge or a candid assessment of personal strengths, limitations, needs, abilities, values and beliefs; • a solid self-concept or an awareness of the dominant thoughts, perceptions and feelings one has about oneself and thus to alter any unrealistic beliefs; • self-acceptance or insight into and understanding of oneself, which culminates in accepting oneself and others; • self-regulation or an awareness of one's internal states and values enabling one to manage oneself and to be flexible in adapting to change; • self-actualization or an awareness of one's unique nature, abilities and purpose enabling one to fulfil one's needs, realize one's potential and achieve meaning in life. In addition, it was also discovered that self-awareness could be achieved and/or developed through various methods like self-analysis, personality instruments, meditation, mentoring, and/or facilitation courses. Chapter three focused on the contribution of self-awareness to personal leadership. It was indicated that personal leadership is a process in which a person takes control of his/her own life. By consulting views of various authors on the subject, it was also established that the underlying foundation of personal leadership is an 'inside-out' approach, which means to start first with one's own perceptions, character and motives. As this approach involves a proactive attitude that is character-based and centred on principles and values, it enables one to achieve personal mastery. The role of self-awareness in each phase in the process of personal leadership was investigated. It was found that self-awareness enables the individual to gain knowledge of his/her different qualities, potential and core values, which is vital for understanding "Who am I?" in the first phase of personal leadership. Furthermore, it was also established that an awareness of one's unique nature, abilities and core values culminates in creating a personal vision, which is crucial to the second phase of "Where am I going?" in the personal leadership process. The last phase in this process addresses the question of "How am I going to get there?" and, consequently, an awareness of one's values, purpose, roles and conscience plays a vital role in taking certain steps to ensure that one realizes one's dreams. Based on the contribution of self-awareness to various aspects of personal leadership, the conclusion of this study was that self-awareness is a condition for personal leadership.

Contrary to common folk and expert theory, the human self is not unitary. There is no Cartesian theatre or homunculus functioning as a metaphorical overlord. Rather, it is an abstractum gleaned from a person�s experiences-a centre of narrative gravity (Dennett 1991). Experiences are a person�s cognisance of her ventures in life from a particular unique perspective. In perspectivising her experiences, the person imputes a certain structure, order, and significance to them. Events are seen as unfolding in a certain inherently and internally coherent way characterised by causality, temporality, or intentionality, etc. In other words, a person�s self emerges out of her innumerable narrativisations of experience, as well as the different protagonist roles she plays in them. Her behaviours in different situations can be understood as different life-narratives being foregrounded, when she is faced with different stimuli different experiences/events present. In real life, self-reflective discourse frequently alludes to a divided, partitive self, and the experiences/behaviours that it can engage in. In academic study, this concept of the divided and narrative-constructivist self is well-represented in disciplines ranging from philosophy (e.g., Dennett 1991, 2005), developmental psychology (e.g., Markus & Nurius 1986; Bruner 1990, 2001; Stern 1994), cognitive psychology (e.g., Hermans & Kempen 1993; Hermans 2002), neuropsychology (e.g. Damasio 1999), psychiatry (e.g., Feinberg 2001), to linguistics (e.g., McNeil 1996; Ochs & Capps 1996; Nair 2003). Depending on the particular theory, however, emphasis is often placed either on its divided or its narrative-constructivist nature. This thesis argues, however, that the two are coexistent and interdependent, and both are essential to the self�s ontology. Its objectives are therefore: (i) to propose a partitioned-narrative model of the self which unifies the two perspectives by positing that the partitioned-representational (Dinsmore 1991) nature of narratives entails the partitioned structure of the self; and (ii) to propose that the partitioned-narrative ontology of the self is what enables and motivates much of our self-reflective discourse and the grammatical resources for constructing that discourse. Partitioning guarantees that a part of the self, i.e., one of its narratives, can be selectively attended to, foregrounded, objectified, and hence talked about. Narrativity provides the contextual guidance and constraints for meaning-construction in such discourse. This claim is substantiated with three application cases: the use of anaphoric reflexives (I found myself smiling); various usages of proper names, including eponyms (the Shakespeare of architecture), eponymic denominal adjectives (a Herculean effort), etc.; and partitive-self constructions which explicitly profile partitioned and selectively focal narratives (That�s his hormones talking). When analysed using the proposed model, these apparently disparate behaviours turn out to share a common basis: the partitioned-narrative self.

Dissertation (Ph. D.)--University of Akron, Dept. of Psychology-Industrial/Organizational, 2009. / "May, 2009." Title from electronic dissertation title page (viewed 11/27/2009) Advisor, Andrea Snell; Committee members, Robert Lord, Aaron Schmidt, James Diefendorff, Matthew Lee; Department Chair, Paul Levy; Dean of the College, Chand Midha; Dean of the Graduate School, George R. Newkome. Includes bibliographical references.

published_or_final_version / Behavioral Health / Master / Master of Social Sciences

We can think about ourselves in a variety of ways, but only some of the thoughts that we entertain about ourselves will be thoughts which we know concern ourselves. I call these first-person thoughts, and the component of such thoughts that picks out the object about which one is thinking—oneself—the self-concept. In this thesis I am concerned with providing an account of the content of the self-concept. The challenge is to provide an account that meets two conditions on first-person thought. The account must show how we are aware of ourselves when we entertain first-person thoughts, so that we have an account that establishes the cognitive significance of first-person thoughts. But, in addition, this awareness must be as robust as the thinker’s ability to entertain first-person thoughts if our account is to respect the guaranteed referential success of the self-concept. I introduce both the subject matter of the thesis, and the constraints on a satisfactory account of that subject matter in the first chapter. In the second chapter I then set up a further problem: much of our self-knowledge is knowledge of our current mental states and it is often argued that we know about and can ascribe those mental states on the basis of introspection alone. The first constraint on an account of first-person thought described in the preceding paragraph requires that we be aware of ourselves in some way if our thoughts are to have the special cognitive significance of first-person thoughts. Yet, I argue, we neither do nor can introspectively observe a subject of thought and experience when we come to know about our mental states and experiences. The failure of introspection to supply us with perceptual information about a subject of thought presents us with the further potential problem. According to Fregean semantics sense determines reference: we count on the content of the elements of thought to determine the reference of terms that are used to express those elements. If we do not introspectively observe a subject of thought then we seem to be at a loss to account for the concept and we are at risk of having to accept that neither the self-concept nor the first-person pronoun are referential. In the remainder of my thesis I consider various responses that we can offer to this problem. First, I examine whether we can avoid the problem with an alternative account of first-person reference according to which reference is fixed by a reflexive rule, and whether we can also base an account of first-person thought on this account of first-person reference. Secondly, I look at the descriptivist view of first-person thought which could potentially provide both an account of first-person thought and first-person reference. These two suggestions must be rejected on the grounds that they fail to accommodate the special cognitive significance of first-person thought. A third approach to first-person thought argues that we employ an objective self-concept when we think about ourselves, a concept that is informed by bodily experience, rather than by introspective observation of a subject. Yet such an account cannot make sense of first-person thoughts in which we question our own embodiment. Lastly I consider whether it is possible to explain the cognitive significance of first-person thought in terms of non-conceptual first-person contents.

It is the aim of this thesis to consider two accounts of 1st-person utterances that are often mistakenly conflated - viz. that involving the 'no-reference' view of "I", and that of the non-assertoric thesis of avowals. The first account says that in a large range of (roughly) 'psychological' uses, 'I' is not a referring expression; the second, that avowals of 1st-personal 'immediate' experience are primarily 'expressive' and not genuine assertions. The two views are expressions of what I term 'Trojanism'. This viewpoint constitutes one side of a 'Homeric Opposition in the Metaphysics of Experience', and has been endorsed by Wittgenstein throughout his writings; it has received recent expression in Professor Anscombe's article 'The First Person'. I explore the ideas of these writers in some depth, and consider to what extent they stand up to criticism by such notable 'Greek' contenders as P.F. Strawson and Gareth Evans. I first give neutral accounts of the key-concepts on which subsequent arguments are based. These are the immunity to error through misidentification (IEM) of certain 1st-person utterances, the guaranteed reference of 'I', avowal, and the Generality Constraint. I consider the close relation of Trojanism to solipsism and behaviourism, and then assess the effectiveness of two arguments for that viewpoint - Anscombe's Tank Argument and the argument from IEM. Though each is appealing, neither is decisive; to assess Trojanism properly we need to look at the non-assertoric thesis of avowals, which alone affords the prospect of a resolution of the really intractable problems of the self generated by Cartesianism. In the course of the latter assessment I consider the different varieties of avowal, broadening the discussion beyond the over-used example 'I am in pain'. I explore Wittgenstein's notion of 'expression', and discuss how this notion may help to explain the authority a subject possesses on his mental states as expressed in avowals. My conclusion is that an expressive account of avowals can provide a satisfactory counter to the Cartesian account of authority without our needing recourse to a non-assertoric or even to a non- cognitive thesis. Discussion of self-consciousness is implicit in discussion of the Homeric Opposition, but there is in addition a short chapter on the concept itself.