ABSTRACT
Out of the physical and social competencies we develop, we fashion a sense of self that becomes increasingly more defined. We gradually draw a circle around ourselves to establish privacy and to keep us safe as an entity in our own right. The outer circle of our body (in relation to the physical world), and the inner circle of our ego (in relation to the social world) can be more or less tight. They form protective rings around us that determine how much room is left for an inner space in the middle, in which we claim our selfhood and personal identity. We discover that we are different and come to know ourselves as ourselves and no one else. We come to realise that the centre of our experience is our own and refer to this as our ‘self’.
