Contemporary communitarians focus their critiques on liberal individualism and posit as a counterpoise to the self-sufficiency and priority of the liberal self their own conception of the self: the individ- ual-in-community. Selfhood, in their view, is inherently communal; one cannot know or define oneself, or be an individual, except in and through the community life in which each is raised. This thesis presents, in contrast to the liberal and communitarian conceptions, a third conception of the self built from developmental psychology the self as compound individuality. Here the self is seen to develop through a series of levels, each level a world unto itself, but each also a part of a more inclusive whole. Both liberal individualism and the communitarian conception that challenges it are, in the light of the theory of compound individuality, seen to be half-right and half-wrong. They gain coherence, and cogency, only when joined. Joining the two is difficult. At the center of the difficulty, and at the center of the liberal-communitarian debate, are competing notions of autonomy and of relationships. Some communitarians see autonomy as leading ineluctably to pernicious individualism. Liberals, on the other hand, argue that individual autonomy must be protected from any communal ends and relationships that might limit it. The theory of compound individuality demonstrates that there is a level of self at which relationships do not threaten autonomy, but, on the contrary, help through autonomy to define the self. Autonomy, rather than jeopardizing relationships by emphasizing self-sufficiency, as the commun- itarians fear, here promotes a level of constitutive relationships. This level of self beyond individualism might be engendered through increased, though restructured, social and political participation. But are the communitarians 1 concerns and their understanding of community fully embraced at this level? If liberal societies were to move beyond individualism, would those societies be any more communitarian and any less liberal? Those societies, as argued in this thesis, would cer- tainly be different from what communitarians envision and from liberal polities today.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The dissertation argues that libertine first-person lyrics of seventeenth-century England reveal a coherent literary strategy in formal, thematic, and ideological terms. My focus is the libertine poems of Donne, Suckling, Carew, Lovelace, and Rochester. I situate the lyrics in a period of historical change, an age of epistemological and ontological questioning. Libertine lyrics concern inconstancy on various levels, from the sexual to the ontological, and they explore the problems of freedom, human nature, identity, and individualism. I argue that the libertine's inconstant selfhood is a creative "solution" to a historical dilemma. This conception of inconstant selfhood is also a response to courtly prescriptions of the behavior of poets and courtiers, a way of claiming an authoritative voice and individualistic freedom. My examination of seventeenth-century libertine lyrics shows that, as part of a transitional age, the poems manifest a contradictory character and they reveal an ideological inconsistency. However, in the final analysis, the imaginative answer to the period's problem of mutability and displacement that libertine lyrics offer turns out to be unsatisfactory. In tracing the development of seventeenth-century libertine lyrics, I suggest that the poems constitute an experimental and transitional development in the lyric tradition of male confessional desire.

This study investigated the relationship between perspective taking and self-esteem in two groups of children between 7 and 12 years of age. Forty-six third graders (mean age = 8.3 years) and 25 sixth graders (means age = 11.4 years) completed a perspective-taking task, a locus of control scale, and a self-perception measure assessing global self-esteem and specific areas of competence. There was little empirical support for the hypotheses associating perspective taking with global self-esteem, locus of control, or competence. Competence domains were intercorrelated and associated with global self-esteem. Locus of control was significantly related to social acceptance and athletic competence. Sixth graders demonstrated superior perspective-taking ability while third graders reported higher levels of self-esteem and more satisfaction with their physical appearance. Gender was related only to behavioural conduct; girls were more satisfied with their overall behaviour. The implications of these findings for self-other development are discussed.

The processing of self-relevant personality trait information was examined using the five factor model of personality. The major question addressed was whether these five personality dimensions impact on the manner in which individuals process information about themselves, relevant to these personalty dimensions, across a range of cognitive processes. Accessibility of self-knowledge, attention and memory were assessed in relation to each of the five factors. Given the strong relation between personality and affect, the role of affect in processing personality information was also examined. Overall, the results indicate that personality and mood states both influence the processing of self-relevent personality trait terms. On a self-endorsement task, Neuroticism, Extraversion and Conscientiousness were associated with shorter response latencies, indicating that individuals can access rapidly information about themselves in relation to these personality dimensions. The results of memory tasks indicate that negative mood exerted a largely disruptive influence on memory performance. On an analog Stroop task, individuals in negative mood states were found to orient to negatively-valenced trait information. An interaction was found between negative mood states and Neuroticism: individuals high in Neuroticism who were also in a negative mood state were more likely to orient to negative trait information. These findings indicate that both personality and mood factors are important variables which operate on different cognitive processes. The results are interpreted in terms of model of representation of the self.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a condition marked by progressive intellectual decline and memory loss, which typically affects individuals over the age of 60. Its origins are unknown but genetic factors are suspected in some cases. There is limited information about the subjective experience of AD although it is often described as a calamity that inevitably destroys the self irrespective of its victims' social circumstances. This dissertation offers an alternative to this nihilistic portrayal that draws on a critical phenomenological framework. It explores the loss of self as an intersubjective phenomenon that is mediated by three contexts: (1) Western representations of the self as autonomous and individualistic; (2) the public description of AD; and (3) the biomedical practices that construct AD as a diagnostic object. / The dissertation examines the experiences of 16 patients and 37 family members who participated in a multi-disciplinary assessment at a dementia clinic. The participants also include 14 clinicians and staff members from the clinic. The findings are derived from a prospective study that includes in-depth, at-home interviews and observations of clinical assessment activities and research-based genetic counseling. The dissertation examines how memory trouble interferes with the intersubjective fabric of everyday life in families as affected participants lose the ability to meaningfully reciprocate on the basis of their individualistic identities. The analysis emphasizes the role of the clinical assessment, diagnosis, and public description in restoring intersubjective order. A salient aspect of this process is the way in which medicalized interpretations of memory trouble facilitate reinterpretation of the eroding self as being animated by pathology. The self is thus rendered meaningful again as it is being indexed to lay descriptions of what people do and say in AD. The analysis also considers how this process extends to participants who came to perceive themselves as victims of AD although they were assessed as not having a dementia disorder. The dissertation finally considers the impact of acquiring genetic knowledge about AD on interpretations of the self. Overall, the research underscores the loss of self in AD as a phenomenological process that is mediated by familial and institutional contexts.

Moral responsibility is an issue at the heart of the free-will debate. The question of how we can have moral responsibility in a deterministic world is an interesting and puzzling one. Compatibilists arguments have left open the possibility that the ability to do otherwise is not required for moral responsibility. The challenge, then, is to come up with what our attributions of moral responsibility are tracking. To do this, criteria which can adequately differentiate cases in which the agent is responsible from cases in which the agent is not responsible are required. I argue that an agent is responsible for the consequences of an action if they stem, in an appropriate way, from the agent's deep values and desires. These deep values and desires make up the Deep Self. Parts of the Deep Self, first, tend to be enduring; second, desires within it tend to be general (as opposed to directed towards specific things); third, they tend to be reflectively endorsed by the agent; fourth, these traits are often central to the agent's self-conception; and fifth, they are not generally in extreme conflict with other deep traits. Empirical work is drawn upon to help develop a suitable account of what deserves to be called a part of the Deep Self. I also strengthen and extend this view by considering issues of poor judgement and weakness of will, and when and how we can be considered responsible for them.

The partners of people with low self-esteem (LSEs) are just as loving and generous as the partners of people with high self-esteem (HSEs; Campbell, Simpson, Boldry, & Kashy, 2005; Murray et al., 2000). Nonetheless, LSEs persist in underestimating their partners’ regard (e.g., Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 2000). In this research, I propose a model of attribution inversion, which predicts that LSEs will invert the positive attributions for a partner’s sacrifice that would be predicted by classic theory (Kelley, 1967), because of the risk associated with interpreting a partner’s sacrifice too positively. In Study 1, LSEs worried more than HSEs about their partners’ sacrifices. In Studies 2 and 3, LSEs experienced more anxiety over a large (but not small) sacrifice relative to HSEs, and attributed less caring motives to their partners. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated my proposed mechanisms: Offering one’s partner an exchange of favors (Study 5)—thereby reducing exchange concerns—or experimentally increasing LSEs’ caring attributions (Study 4) eliminated LSEs’ tendency to be more cautious than HSEs about their partners’ sacrifices, suggesting that exchange concerns and doubts about caring drive LSEs’ typical caution. Finally, Study 6 demonstrated that caution is not unique to LSEs. Under a cognitive load manipulation, HSEs were just as cautious, but were apparently able to override that automatic inclination when given sufficient time and resources. Overall, my research suggests that the discounting of a partner’s sacrifices is one route by which low self-esteem is self-perpetuating even with a loving partner.