Charles Cooley: Self

“The distinctive thing in the idea for which the pronouns of the first person are names is apparently a characteristic kind of feeliing which may be called the my-feeling or sense of appropriation. Almost any sort of ideas may be associated with this feeling, and so come to be named "I" or "mine," but the feeling, and that alone it would seem, is the determining factor in the matter. As Professor James says in his admirable discussion of the self, the words "me" and "self" designate "all the things which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort."”

Charles Cooley

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 168-9

Feeling , Idea , Sense , Personality

“The social self is simply any idea, or system of ideas, drawn from the communicative life, that the mind cherishes as its own.”

Charles Cooley

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 17

Life , Communication , Idea

“A self -idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification.”

Charles Cooley

Variant: A self -idea of this sort seems to have three principal elements: the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of his judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification.
Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 182 (1922)

Feeling , Imagination , Idea , Appearance

“BY primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one's very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.”

Charles Cooley

Source: Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, 1909, p. 23 (1962)

Life , Way , Feeling , Nature

“To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.”

Charles Cooley

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 120

Travel , Sense , Change

“The group self or "we" is simply an "I" which includes other persons. One identifies himself with a group and speaks of the common will, opinion, service, or the like in terms of "we" and "us." The sense of it is stimulated by co-operation within and opposition without.”

Charles Cooley

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 209