Building the Self. A contextual approach

Abstract

We propose a review of the formation of the Self from a phenomenological-contextual perspective. This approach is justified as a way of solving the metaphors that are used to understand the formation of the Self, which usually commits either categorical and reification errors or directly aporetic arguments. The concept of the Self is not denied, given the huge reinforcement received by the human organism from infancy to tact with private experiences, and such being-in-contact is precisely the primary phenomenological experience of the Self. A genuinely behavioral explanatory model is presented, understanding the Self as a social epiphenomenon that requires a basic pre-reflective awareness in a particular cultural context that will shape it through prototypical verbal behavior in human interaction. Finally, the different stages of Self-learning are described. The discussion underlines the extraordinary importance of understanding the Self in terms of perspective, which leads to the parsimonious comprehension of the classic features attributed to the Self, such as constancy, timelessness, transcendence and interiority without elaborating mental constructs.