ABSTRACT
At the very beginning of scientific psychology, James (1890/1981) noted the intimate relation between consciousness and the self:
Every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness. … The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal consciousnesses, minds, selves, concrete particular I’s and you’s [sic]. Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. … It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned. … On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not “feelings and thoughts exist” but “I think” and “I feel.” (p. 221, italics in original)
