ABSTRACT
George Herbert Mead’s view of the self entails a theater of the mind in that the person possesses the ability to determine a course of action and to act it out. In Erving Goffman’s social psychology there is a difference between the essential self and the presented self, and it is the presented self that becomes the object of social response in dramaturgical society; the essential self becomes subordinated to the presented self. The self, in the alienated use of dramaturgy, ultimately requires that the inner reality of the person be estranged from the outer reality of the external theater. However, the estrangement of the self in dramaturgical society implies other assaults against a competent, nonalienated self that must be noted. The negation of self is scarcely a theoretically informed way to respond to the negation of praxis in the world of work.
