lauren_almighty
07-08-2009, 09:50 PM
I recently remembered something that has stayed with me since childhood. I remember being about 4 years old and I was playing with my barbie dolls when all of a sudden I felt a jolt and it was like somebody had flicked a switch and I suddenly had self awareness. At the time I remember feeling different and knowing that something strange had just happened to me. I never knew how to describe it at that age and had always called it the day that I started to get memories. It was like I was alive but without the 'spark' that makes me who I am and it was like I was just living to exist until the real 'me' entered my body. I do not know how else to explain it but I knew that it was odd at the time and I made a point of remembering it all these years.
I was talking to my mum about it recently and she told me about Freud's theory of the id, the ego and the superego. So maybe this was the moment that my 'superego' entered my body because it happens around the age of 5 years old according to Freud. This makes sense when compared to my childhood experience.
It has changed my perspective on a lot of things. It has also made me wonder about reincarnation. Maybe our souls don't enter the physical body until a few years after they have been born. It's a bit freaky when you think about it in depth but I can remember that specific memory so clearly and it was exactly like somebody had flicked a switch.
Have you ever seen a dog stand in front of a mirror? Sometimes they bark at themselves or stand there with a puzzled look. Believe it or not, the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror is pretty advanced, and dogs have yet to demonstrate that they can do it. Some psychologists argue that it is a uniquely human ability, although at least one study has shown that teenage chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror.
When we've developed a sense of self-awareness, we've achieved a state of self-consciousness. Why "developed?" Aren't we aware of ourselves at birth? Actually, it may take up to five or six months for an infant to develop anything even remotely resembling self-consciousness.
The mirror technique is one of the tools that psychologists have used to test infants' and toddlers' levels of self-consciousness. The simplest form of this test involves just setting an infant down in front of a mirror and watching her response. Some researchers have shown that 5- to 6-month-olds will reach out and touch the mirror image, suggesting they think it's another baby, or at least different from them.
In 1979, Michael Lewis and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn conducted a sophisticated version of the mirror test. They applied some blush to the noses of two sets of children — 15- to 17-month-olds and 18- to 24-month-olds. The idea: If the kids look in the mirror and see the blush on their nose, they'll touch it or try to remove it in some way. However, this requires the child to realize that the person in the mirror is himself. So what happened? Just a few of the 15- to 17-month-olds actually reached up and touched their noses, but the vast majority of the 18- to 24-month-old children did it. So, these children must have recognized themselves in the mirror.
Self-consciousness and self-awareness are the same thing. Being self-conscious just means being aware of oneself. But too much of anything can be bad. Usually when someone says she is "self-conscious," she means that she is aware of some flaw. This is not the type of self-consciousness dealt with here.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-psychology-of-selfconsciousness.html
id, ego and superego: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-id-ego-and-superego-in-psycholog.html
I was talking to my mum about it recently and she told me about Freud's theory of the id, the ego and the superego. So maybe this was the moment that my 'superego' entered my body because it happens around the age of 5 years old according to Freud. This makes sense when compared to my childhood experience.
It has changed my perspective on a lot of things. It has also made me wonder about reincarnation. Maybe our souls don't enter the physical body until a few years after they have been born. It's a bit freaky when you think about it in depth but I can remember that specific memory so clearly and it was exactly like somebody had flicked a switch.
Have you ever seen a dog stand in front of a mirror? Sometimes they bark at themselves or stand there with a puzzled look. Believe it or not, the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror is pretty advanced, and dogs have yet to demonstrate that they can do it. Some psychologists argue that it is a uniquely human ability, although at least one study has shown that teenage chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror.
When we've developed a sense of self-awareness, we've achieved a state of self-consciousness. Why "developed?" Aren't we aware of ourselves at birth? Actually, it may take up to five or six months for an infant to develop anything even remotely resembling self-consciousness.
The mirror technique is one of the tools that psychologists have used to test infants' and toddlers' levels of self-consciousness. The simplest form of this test involves just setting an infant down in front of a mirror and watching her response. Some researchers have shown that 5- to 6-month-olds will reach out and touch the mirror image, suggesting they think it's another baby, or at least different from them.
In 1979, Michael Lewis and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn conducted a sophisticated version of the mirror test. They applied some blush to the noses of two sets of children — 15- to 17-month-olds and 18- to 24-month-olds. The idea: If the kids look in the mirror and see the blush on their nose, they'll touch it or try to remove it in some way. However, this requires the child to realize that the person in the mirror is himself. So what happened? Just a few of the 15- to 17-month-olds actually reached up and touched their noses, but the vast majority of the 18- to 24-month-old children did it. So, these children must have recognized themselves in the mirror.
Self-consciousness and self-awareness are the same thing. Being self-conscious just means being aware of oneself. But too much of anything can be bad. Usually when someone says she is "self-conscious," she means that she is aware of some flaw. This is not the type of self-consciousness dealt with here.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-psychology-of-selfconsciousness.html
id, ego and superego: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-the-id-ego-and-superego-in-psycholog.html