The "Real Self" Controversy: Toward an Integration of Humanistic and Interactionist Theory

The logical status of the concept "real self" and its usefulness in psychological theory have been topics of some debate in this journal. Critics have argued that this concept stems from Maslow's tendency toward biological reductionism that caused him to ignore the fact, supposedly established by the symbolic interactionists, that the self is ultimately a social-cultural product. In this article, I take steps toward a new view of self-actualization that incorporates insights from both Maslow's theory and the symbolic interactionist perspective. A key point is that the self is a process involving both symbolic and somatic feedback and that, in the ordinary state of consciousness, symbolic self processes are dominant. Observations are provided from the author's study of personal change at Kripalu Ashram to illustrate the importance of social interaction (i.e., socialization processes) in the self-actualization process. Self-actualization involves some of the same processes that symbolic interactionists have observed in other forms of socialization such as becoming a doctor or becoming a deviant. But self-actualization also involves learning to attend to and give meaning to somatic feedback processes so that the person's sense of self ultimately becomes more evenly based on both symbolic and somatic processes.