ABSTRACT
The self is an elusive concept, yet one that is at the heart of the question of the relationship between psychology and culture. A basic methodological issue concerning the self has grown out of attempts to apply the method of psychoanalytic interviewing in widely different cultures. The term self denotes subjective reflexivity; it is impossible to conceive of “self” without self-awareness. “Self” is in this sense a strictly psychological concept, in contrast to “person,” which it sees as a sociological term. One would need to explore the emotion terms that label states of the self; ideas about the nature of the body, its boundaries and its relationship to subjectivity; the ways in which ideas about initiative and personal responsibility are bound up in verbs of personal activity and receptivity; and notions of the continuity and discontinuity of the self and self-experience.
