Are There Meaningful Relationships between Psychosocial Self and Physiological Self?

Humans are living beings who, like all other living things, have a physical form consisting of physiological self-generating processes that maintain co-operative relationships between that form (human body) and the environment in which it exists. Several sensory systems (our five senses and internal senses such as our immune systems) allow environmental changes to be apprehended and, through the co-ordinating activity of the nervous system, trigger changes in other parts of the body (e.g., muscle movements) to preserve adequate relationships across the physiological self-non-self boundary. Humans are born with a physical structure with the capacity to develop into a human ‘self’ when immersed in a network of consensual and co-operative (loving and accepting) relationships with other humans. During this process, each of us develops the ability to observe and make sense of what is happening to our bodies through a ‘linguistic’ entity that we label ‘me’. This psychosocial self (me) is therefore a container for the observer telling stories to explain the journey of my body. As such, it is dependent on the operation of that body but not found within it. Physiological self exists in the molecular and cellular interactions of our biophysical contexts, while psychosocial self emerges from human relationships within our sociocultural contexts. Although we cannot describe or measure one in terms of the other, each affects the other and we can gain useful insights into ourselves by recognizing the mutual influences.