E-Book Overview
How can you understand yourself? Where do your views, attitudes and values come from and why do they change? This accessible and illuminating book provides a reliable guide to these questions. The book:
· Demonstrates that personal identity is formed around
basic needs for security and self-esteem and the personal
desires that flow from them
· Shows the role of the emotions in personal life
· Explores the limits of approaches that deny the existence
of 'individuals' and 'personal experience'
· Demonstrates how we build on everyday problems and
dilemmas of life to shape our moods, attitudes and feelings.
Shrewd and compelling, the book will be of interest to anyone studying Social Psychology and Sociology.
E-Book Content
• demonstrating that personal identity is formed around basic needs for security and self-esteem and the personal desires that flow from them; • illustrating the role of the emotions in personal life; • exploring the limits of approaches that deny the existence of ‘individuals’ and ‘personal experience’, and; • revealing how we build on everyday problems and dilemmas of life to shape our moods, attitudes and feelings. Shrewd and compelling, the book will be of interest to anyone studying Social Psychology and Sociology.
Social and Personal Identity Understanding YourSelf
D E R E K L AY D E R
‘Understanding our personal identity or self is a central concern for all of us living in the contemporary age, and Derek Layder has written an excellent introduction to this topic from a social scientific perspective. The book is lucid, engaging, and understandable, developing a unique theory of the self while introducing the ideas of the key thinkers who have informed it. As one of the few accessible texts on the self, this will be required reading for all students in the social and psychological sciences.