Revisiting The Self

Who am I? Or, even more curiously, who are you? These are questions about the self – that aspect of who we are that we believe defines, or at least describes, each of us. The self is not merely an internal creation, however. Family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances all contribute to who we are, and more importantly, they help to shape who we think we are. In this innovative and thought-provoking book, the various social aspects of the self and its construction are imaginatively explored. Such explorations can seem abstractly academic, but they carry great significance. Knowledge of how the self is constructed has many implications for most social processes, for example, understanding the volatility of the notion of self that can provide the basis for terrorist radicalisation, can generate destructive suicidal tendencies, or can foment aggressive national identities. This interdisciplinary collection is relevant not only for theoretical and methodological elaborations, but also for more practical considerations. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science, and two articles from Self and Identity.

Offers the reader a historical/developmental overview of the concept of 'use of self' and explores its adequacy for contemporary ethical practice. This book provides the reader with first-person, practitioners' accounts of their own 'use of self' in examples of reflective practice approaches. It broadens the scope of the concept of 'use of self'.

This is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than 700,000 copies sold around the world, In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate—and helped many women and men to see themselves and each other in a different light.Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women—their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result is truly a tour de force, which may well reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.

Breathing fresh air into debates surrounding foreign policy and interstate relations, Bianca Naude presents a holistic theory of states as collectives of people that cannot be reduced to their individual constituents. Moving among current research on the ontological status of the state alongside important arguments in support of the state personhood thesis, Naude begins by exploring Freud’s personality theory and the ways in which this theory has evolved over time in response to newer insights from the field of experimental psychology. Recognizing that Freud’s work is in many ways outdated, she considers more recent literature on narcissism as an aspect of self-esteem rather than a form of psychopathology, drawing specifically on Kohut’s expansion of the concept of narcissism as a normal feature of personality development. Using the South African state as a case study, Naude demonstrates the various ways in which the state presents itself to the outside world on the one hand, and how it wishes to see itself on the other. She further considers how narcissistic defenses help protect the state's ego from criticism and self-judgments. Revisiting State Personhood and World Politics will help readers understand how the state sees itself, why or when the state experiences shame, humiliation, guilt or pride, and how it responds to these self-conscious emotions. It will be a valuable resource to researchers and students of International Relations.

Elaine Aron follows up her bestsellers on the highly sensitive person with a groundbreaking new book on the undervalued self. She explains that self-esteem results from having a healthy balance of love and power in our lives. Readers will learn to incorporate love into situations that seem to require power and deal with power struggles that mask themselves as issues of love. From the bedroom to the boardroom, her strategies will enable us to escape feelings of shame, defeat, and depression; dissolve relationship hostility; and become our best selves. With Aron's clear, empathetic writing and extraordinary scientific and human insight, The Undervalued Self is a simple and effective guide to developing healthy, fulfilling relationships, and finding true self-worth.

In this edited volume, scholars from a wide range of areas of international law consider whose interests are at stake in the application of the principle of proportionality. In so doing, the volume casts new light this important principle.

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the criminal defence of self-defence from a philosophical, legal and human rights perspective. The primary focus is on self-defence as a defence to homicide, as this is the most difficult type of self-defensive force to justify. Although not always recognised as such, self-defence is a contentious defence, permitting as it does the victim of an attack to preserve her life at the expense of another. If one holds that all human life is of equal value, explaining why this is permissible poses something of a challenge. It is particularly difficult to explain where the aggressor is, for reasons of non-age or insanity for example, not responsible for her actions. The first part of the book is devoted to identifying the proper theoretical basis of a claim of self-defence. It examines the classification of defences, and the concepts of justification and excuse in particular, and locates self-defence within this classification. It considers the relationship between self-defence and the closely related defences of duress and necessity. It then proceeds critically to analyse various philosophical explanations of why self-defensive killing is justified, before concluding that the most convincing account is one that draws on the right to life with an accompanying theory of forfeiture. The book then proceeds to draw upon this analysis to examine various aspects of the law of self-defence. There is detailed analysis of the way in which, on a human rights approach, it is appropriate to treat the issues of retreat, imminence of harm, self-generated self-defence, mistake and proportionality, with a particular focus on whether lethal force is ever permissible in protecting property or in preventing rape. The analysis draws on material from all of the major common law jurisdictions. The book concludes with an examination of the implications that the European Convention on Human Rights might have for the law of self-defence, especially in the areas of mistaken belief and the degree of force permissible to protect property.

The classic New York Times bestseller, with a new introduction by E.J. Dionne Jr. When The Culture of Narcissism was first published in 1979, Christopher Lasch was hailed as a “biblical prophet” (Time). Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life. The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.