William James

William James is the obvious starting point, for he wrote extensively about both self and consciousness, and his ideas are still widely respected today.. . . He stressed that this is a matter of ‘feeling,’ that one’s own thoughts have a warmth and intimacy about them that distinguishes them from others:

“The Universal conscious fact is not “feeling and thoughts exist,” but “I think,” and “I feel”. No psychology, at any rate, can question the ‘existence’ of personal selves. The worst of psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth”

He begins by dividing the self into two ever-present elements: the empirical self or objective person, which he calls the “me,” and th subjective knowing thought or pure ego, which he calls “I”. the empirical self is easier to deal with and includes three aspects. The material self is a persona’s body, his clothes an possessions, his family and friends -- indeed all those things he is likely to call “mind” -- together with personal vanity or modesty, love of wealth and fear of poverty. Then there is his “social self,” which includes his reputation and how he is seen by others. As James Points out, we each have as many social selves as there are people who recognize us and carry an image of us in their mind, but in practice these divide into groups, and we may behave differently with these different groups and feel ourselves to be a different person in different company. . . Page 120

One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through the life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question (James 1902) ~ Page 356