ABSTRACT
The use of the term self, in its nonhyphenated form, has increased exponentially in recent psychological writings. However, referent and meaning are still imprecise and ambiguous. There seem to be two main referents. Sometimes “self” is used either as synonymous with oneself, the concrete person, or as equivalent with personality, as defined by temperamental and behavioral traits, or perhaps by salient psychological characteristics. The most frequent referent of the term, by far, is the subject-as-known, or the product of self-cognition. I argue here that both these uses of the term are somewhat inappropriate; I then attempt to define a domain of psychological functioning, to which the nonhyphenated “self” should be properly and unambiguously applied. It is not my intention to write about language and to construct an argument about semantics. In a discipline where agreement is rarely found, and only on the basis of empirical evidence, a discussion about the proper use of words is not likely to convince many people. My main intention is positive and substantive, namely, to point to, and clarify a set of psychological processes, to which the label, self, clearly belongs, and from which the self as object of cognition should be carefully distinguished. This domain of functioning, although essential to the understanding of specifically human characteristics, has been, at least from a theoretical perspec-
tive, seriously neglected, and one reason for the neglect is the quasi monopoly that the cognitive self has acquired in psychological discourse.
