In this far-ranging study, Scheibe seeks an understanding of the self and personal identity. In doing so, he focuses on the various relationships of the self in social environments. He examines the major historical perspectives on the self, the process or processes of socialization, memory, and identity, and the psychology of national identity.

Providing an integrative survey of the burgeoning social-psychological literature on the self, this work is intended for undergraduates with a background in psychology as well as graduate students looking for an overview of the field.

There are groups in society that experience profound social problems. Others show signs of a growing social malaise. From his research experiences in the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Indonesia, Taylor examines the reasons for such social problems and offers possible solutions.

What is really happening when people either individually or in groups identify with particular definitions of themselves or strike out to take up new identities? Do gender, class and ethnicity offer some stability, or are they limiting?

Continuing the old philosophical project of reconciling a scientific view of ourselves with the view of ourselves as agents of free will and meaning, but bringing to this project the latest insights of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychiatry, Flanagan's collection of essays explores topics such as a scientific explanation of consciousness, the moral socialization of children, and the nature and issues of psychological phenomena such as multiple personality disorder and false memory syndrome.

Cultivating Minds is a ground-breaking unification of the ideas of Simmel and contemporary perspectives in cultural psychology. The theoretical framework proposed is based on an integration of core philosophical, sociological, and psychological ideas from the intellectual traditions of pragmatism, socioculturalism, constructivism, and transactionalism.The primary focus of this work is on cultivation as a metaphor for identity formation. According to this idea, each and every human agent is an active producer of its own development and identity. The cultivation model expands existing sociocultural perspectives by elaborating further how an individual's cultivation of the sociocultural environment is mediated through artefacts and objects, a concept exemplified by the identity processes demonstrated by graffiti artists. The idea of the cultured mind has profound implications not only for cultural psychology but also for theories of identity and, of course, development. It affects the way we understand the formation of the self and, in the end, the growth of the person. The result is a theory which captures the convergence between identity, culture and development in new and far-reaching ways.

Continuing the old philosophical project of reconciling a scientific view of ourselves with the view of ourselves as agents of free will and meaning, but bringing to this project the latest insights of neuroscience, cognitive science, and psychiatry, Flanagan's collection of essays explores topics such as a scientific explanation of consciousness, the moral socialization of children, and the nature and issues of psychological phenomena such as multiple personality disorder and false memory syndrome.

In 1972, Ruthellen Josselson was a young psychologist fascinated by the riddle of how a woman creates an identity and chooses one path over another in life--particularly in the face of the nascent feminist movement, which challenged as never before the traditional role models of earlier generations. Selecting at random thirty young women in their last year of college, Josselson undertook a ground-breaking study that would follow these women's personal odysseys over the next twenty-two years, from graduation to midlife. What she learned about the ways women reinvent themselves in an ever-changing world is the subject of Revising Herself, a myth-shattering look at both a unique generation of American women on the front lines of wrenching social change, and at the conflicts and compromises facing women today. With stunning candor and hard-won insight, the "ordinary" (and anonymous) women in Josselson's study reveal how much more complex and interesting real women's lives are than the one-dimensional stereotypes often portrayed in the media. Dismissing a traditional "stage theory" of development as overly simplistic, Josselson identifies four trajectories that women take from adolescence to adulthood. Guardians are the "good girls"--high achieving and committed to fulfilling their family's expectations, but rigid in outlook and resistant to change. Pathmakers are not afraid of risk or commitment, striving to balance their own needs with others'. The often idealistic Searchers are overwhelmed by choice and unable to make commitments, while Drifters live only for the moment, avoiding choice and an exploration of identity. Reflecting the degree to which women take risks, make choices, and form commitments, these paths form a foundation for adulthood--but they also lead to surprises: at midlife, Guardians seem strikingly able to "cut loose" from earlier traditional patterns, while many Drifters have "found themselves," sometimes in quite traditional ways. And coming of age just as the feminist movement gathered momentum, the women in Josselson's study were the first to confront many contemporary issues not faced by their mothers, or their mothers' mothers: How does an Irish Catholic contemplate an abortion? How does a woman whose parents believe education is wasted on a daughter find the will to apply to medical school? In examining these questions and others, Josselson shows that the forging of a woman's identity--whatever her "path"--is ongoing, a balancing of the need for self-assertion against the equally compelling need for relationships. Women create their identities along the seams of both competence and connection and continually revise what they have made. Allowing women to define themselves in their own terms, Revising Herself holds up a provocative mirror in which readers can reflect upon their own life choices. Whether a Guardian, Pathmaker, Searcher, or Drifter, readers will recognize themselves in these women's experiences and gain new insight into how we construct our identities over a lifetime.