Lesson 8: Material Self

• understanding the self can be examined through its different components.

  James described these components as:

  ✓ Its constituents

  ✓ The feelings and emotions they arouse – self-feelings;

  ✓ The actions to which they prompt – self-seeking and self-preservation.
• The constituents of self are composed of the material self, the social self, the spiritual self and the pure ego. (Trentmann 2016; Green 1997)
• The material self, according to James primarily is about our bodies, clothes, immediate family and home.
• The innermost part of our material self is our body.
• James believed that clothing is an essential part of the material self.
• Lotze in his book, Microcosmus, stipulates that “any time we bring an object into the surface of our body, we invest that object into the consciousness of our personal existence taking in tis contours to be our own and making it part of the self.” (Watson 2014).
• The fabric and style of the clothes we wear bring sensations to the body to which directly affect our attitudes and behavior. Thus, clothes are placed in the second hierarchy of material self. Clothing is a form of self-expression. We choose and wear clothes that reflect our self (Watson 2014).
• Third in the hierarchy is our immediate family. Our parents and siblings hold another great important part of our self.
• The fourth component of material self is our home. Home is where our heart is. It is the earliest nest of our selfhood.
• As James (1890) described self: “a man’s self is the sum total of all what he CAN call his.” Possessions then become a part or an extension of the self.
• Russel Belk (1988) posits that “…we regard our possessions as part of ourselves. We are what we have and what we possess.”
• As we grow older, putting importance to material possession decreases
• However, material possession gains higher value in our lifetime if we use material possession to find happiness, associate these things with significant events, accomplishments, and people in our lives.
• The possessions that we dearly have tell something about who we are, our self-concept, our past, and even our future.