THE “I” AND THE “ME”. George Herbert Mead (1863–1931). George Herbert Mead was a social psychologist and a philosopher, and he looked to both disciplines in trying to work out what exactly we mean when we talk about the “self.” Traditional philosophers and sociologists saw societies as growing from the coming together of individual, autonomous selves, but Mead said the opposite was true—selves emerge from social interactions; they are formed within society. This concept is prevalent now in psychology and psychotherapy, but when Mead first presented his ideas in 1913 in The Social Self, it was a revolutionary point of view. Mead disagreed with the idea that individual, experiencing selves exist in any recognizable way before they are part of the social process. The social process of experience or behavior is “logically prior to the individuals and their individual experiencing which are involved in it.” By this, Mead is suggesting that an individual’s consciousness, with all its intentions, desires, and so on, is formed within the context of social relationships, one or more particular languages, and a set of cultural norms. From birth, babies begin to sense communication through gestures, which function as symbols and build “a universe of discourse.” Over time, they learn to mimic and “import” the practices, gestures, and eventually words of those around them, so that they can make their own response and receive further gestures and words from others. Who we are. The pattern of attitudes that the baby experiences and internalizes (learns) creates the sense of “me.” In this way, the “me” represents the behaviors, expectations, and attitudes learned through interactions with others. But Mead says that we also have another sense of ourselves, which he calls the “I.” Both the “I” and the “me” are different functions of the self. The “I,” like the “me,” keeps evolving, but its function is to reflect on the “me,” while also seeing the bigger picture: the “me” acts in habitual ways, while the “I” can reflect on these and make selfconscious choices. It allows us to be different, both from other people and our former selves, through reflection on our actions. Mead’s theory of the development of self was pivotal in turning psychology and sociology away from the idea of “self” as being merely internal introspection, and aligning it firmly within a societal context. G.H. Mead. George Herbert Mead was born in Massachusetts. His father was a minister in the Congregational Church, and he moved the family to Oberlin, Ohio, to teach at the seminary there when Mead was six years old. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1883, Mead worked for a few years as a teacher and then as a railroad surveyor before returning to academia. He began his studies in philosophy and sociology at Harvard University in 1887 and seven years later moved to the University of Chicago, where he worked until his death in 1931. He claimed to have an “activist spirit” and marched in support of women's suffrage and other causes. The philosopher John Dewey acknowledged Mead as having “a seminal mind of the very first order.” Key works: 1913 The Social Self, 1932 The Philosophy of the Present, 1934 Mind, Self, and Society. IN CONTEXT. FOCUS: The development of self. KEY DATES: 1902 US sociologist Charles Cooley says our views of self reflect the standpoint of significant others in our lives. 1921 In The Language of Gestures, German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt says that the mind is inherently social. 1975 US anthropologist Clifford Geertz claims the self is a “distinctive whole and set contrastively against other such wholes.” 1980s British-born US social psychologist Hazel Rose Markus suggests we each form a schema based on past social experiences that operates as a self-system. 1999 US psychologist Daniel Siegel suggests that the development of the social self happens in concert with developing brain function. Mind can never find expression, and could never have come into existence at all, except in terms of a social environment. G.H. Mead.