Negative at self concept?

What is Self-Concept?

Basically, self-concept stands for yourown vision of yourself and your own self-image. This is veryimportant for human existence since we all create certain images ofourselves in our own minds. Moreover, we focus our perception basedon this image and enter relationships with other people influenced bywhat we think about ourselves. Therefore, if your self-concept ishigh, you are likely to be confident, proud of yourself and full ofbelief that you are capable of succeeding in life. On the other hand,if you have low level of self-concept, you are likely to be shy,antisocial, with serious self-confidence issues and other suchbehavioral problems.

The Theories

There were many scientists who tried toexplain this importance of self-concept upon every person's life andpersonality.

Sigmund Freud, being the father ofpsychoanalysis, said that we are all driven by our sexual drive andour aggressive drive. Therefore, we have three aspects of ourpersonality, making our libido running. This is the id, being ourdemand for pleasure and content. Then, we have the ego, being a partof the id which tries to fulfill its wishes, being aware of thesocial norms and regulation and the superego, which are all thoserules and moral foundations we are not supposed to break as long aswe live. Therefore, the superego and the id are usually in conflictsince the former prevents the latter in many cases. Ego, then,balances the two, making us fulfill some of our desires, leavingothers on hold or letting them go. Superego is, therefore, dominant,and leaves the feeling of guilt present to haunt us if we break itsrules.

Abraham Maslow had a different theorywhere he claimed that our needs and desires form our personality.However, this plethora of needs has to be fulfilled gradually, fromthe very bottom of its hierarchical order. Therefore, in order tostart your journey towards self-concept, you need to deal with themost trivial things such as not feeling thirsty, hungry etc.

Thus, when we lack certain things, weare prone to feeling miserable and lack our self-concept. Also, whenwe try to achieve something, fulfilling our desires, and fail, or getscorned for trying, we are likely to think that we will never behappy, looking down on ourselves and having low self-concept.

Finally, we could agree that humans arehedonists. Therefore, we desire to indulge into pleasures we strivefor. This often collides with our social norms, making us suffer anddevelop personality issues which have plenty to do with ourself-concept.