Toward a More Comprehensive Formulation of Selfhood

FAIN: FA-11090-75

M. Brewster Smith
Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077)

To examine conceptions of the self in sociology, personality and social psychology, culture-and-personality study, and psycho analytic psychiatry, in critical depth, and to write the draft of a book for the educated layman as well as fellow psychologists that presents this analysis and carries forward as far as possible on integrative conception of self as essential personhood. Because it is a distinguishing feature of human selfhood that what people believe about their human potential affects what they make actual ; ±t is humanly important to try to consolidate a more complex and open view of human personhood than currently prevails.