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The study of self is the study of the architectonics of subjective experience and personal meaning. I view the self as the way the individual experiences his person and his relationship to the inner and outer world. The experience of self is the product of the cognitive apparatus that transforms actual experience into subjective meaning, and arises from the uniquely human capacity to organize experience in two different and interacting modes, the sensate and the syntactic. This cognitive system, involving knowing on a felt and apprehended level as well as knowing on the level of thought and comprehension, provides the complex structure that designs mental life.
In previous communications in which I proposed that the designs of knowing and meaning are cognitive templates central to character structure, I indicated that I also view the self as a part of the cognitive system related to character (Barnett, 1968, 1978b, 1979). I proposed “that the self is a cognitive event, a bridging concept between the designs of knowing and meaning on the one hand, and action and behavior on the other. I further observed that the self is designed and limited by the cognitive templates of character. This paper will attempt to extend and clarify this position. I will explore the cognitive and epistemic issues that I believe are central to the study of self and its relationship to character, psychodynamics and psychopathology.
The self refers to the experience of “I,” “me,” and “my.” It is a system of constructs, implicit and explicit, formed by cognition, which I have conceptualized as experiential knowing, that includes sensate and syntactic forms existing at all levels of awareness