Socrates’s notion that self-knowledge is important has endured. Among more modern behavioral thinkers, Skinner pointed out that self-knowledge arises among members of a verbal community because other members of the community shape up a repertoire of self-descriptive behavior. People teach youngsters how to describe their own behavior because it is useful in community living: “Where were you when you saw the herd of deer?”; “Did you take my slingshot?”; and “Please show me where it hurts.” Over time, the individual as both a member of a verbal community and as a speaker and listener inside his own skin, learns to speak and listen to himself (Skinner, 1974). In a post- Skinnerian account of language, we regard the act of knowing about or describing the self as a verbal process, and the verbal description—that is, the things or information known about the self—as verbal content. The conceptualized self is thus the verbal content generated through verbal processes in the context of self-knowledge.
The conceptualized self is regarded as rather thinglike; it is not the self, but it is a product of thinking about the self or behaving verbally in relation to the self in context. Some aspects of the conceptualized self might be rather static—for example, one’s gender. Some might be changing yet consistent—for example, one’s age changes, and it changes in a consistent manner relative to the verbal community’s notion of time. Some aspects of the conceptualized self might change radically depending on the spe- cific context—for example, one might feel talented in the context of artistic ability and incompetent in the context of athletic ability, or attractive in the context of spending
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time gazing into the eyes of one’s beloved and unattractive in the context of watching the Mr. or Miss Universe pageant.
A conceptualized self of some sort will arise within any verbal community. A conceptualized self allows us to communicate with others. For example, “My name is Shandra, I am a vegetarian, I do not like cold weather, I do not speak Spanish, I am a native of California, I am allergic to cats, and I have two children.” A conceptualized self allows us to make sense of our own behavior and the behavior of others. It also pro- vides a vehicle for others to make sense of our behavior. For instance, if a person inter- acting with Shandra knows that she is a vegetarian, the person might not cook chicken for her dinner, and if a person knows that she does not speak Spanish, the person will know why Shandra ignored a question asked in Spanish. A conceptualized self is useful in many settings.
A conceptualized self can be more problematic with respect to evaluative content. Notice the difference between the content “I am a woman/vegetarian/Californian/ allergic to cats” and “I am bad/smart/clumsy/pretty/athletic/fat.” Content is problematic when a person becomes fused with it. Instead of seeing content as merely words—that is, verbal output that is an outcome of verbal processes and influenced by one’s history as it is brought to bear on the present situation or context—the individual fuses with that content and sees the content as the self instead of as a product of verbal behavior engaged in by one’s self. When a person is fused with negatively evaluated content, emotional avoidance is likely. If “I am bad” is my essential nature rather than merely a thought that shows up, then it becomes important to avoid contexts that evoke this neg- ative evaluation. If “I am anxious” and “anxiety is bad,” then it becomes important to avoid anxiety. One might be tempted to merely change one’s evaluations—for instance, by replacing the thought “I am bad” with the thought “I am good.” However, fusion with positive evaluations can be just as problematic. If it is important to maintain the evaluation that “I am good,” a person may avoid taking risks and engaging in behaviors that might lead to rewarding experiences that also include the possibility of negative evaluations—for example, seeking a promotion, asking someone out on a date, or trying a new activity, all of which might be rewarding, and all fraught with the risk of rejection and/or negative self-evaluations.
Self as Process
Self as process has a more in-the-moment quality than does self as content. Ongoing self-awareness is the process of noticing verbal content. A person unaware of her thoughts, feelings, and sensations would not function very effectively in many contexts. An extreme example of the consequences of not noticing sensations is that of people with congenital sensory neuropathy (also known as congenital anesthesia). Because their nerves do not reach close enough to the surface of the skin, they do not feel the sensation of pain. To never feel pain sounds desirable, yet people who do not feel pain due to congenital anesthesia report many injuries. This problem is exacerbated by their inability to notice the early warning signs of danger and injury that pain provides. Such
individuals experience frequent broken bones, cuts, and burns and may even bite off portions of their own tongues. Lack of self-awareness in this respect is problematic.
As a less extreme example, consider a man who as a child was told, “Boys don’t cry,” and as an adult is unwilling to cry and to contact sadness; instead of contacting tender feelings, he instead feels numb or perhaps even angry. The plight of the person who doesn’t want to contact feelings and ongoing streams of thought is also bleak. Consider the example of a woman who, in trying to avoid thoughts and feelings related to a past trauma, may miss important current environmental cues that she is placing herself in a potentially dangerous situation. It is possible that a person who is repeatedly victim- ized is engaging in high-risk behavior because thoughts of warning signs and danger are being experientially avoided. Her unwillingness to contact her own thoughts about the past increases the chances of her being revictimized in the present. Our client Rick uses drugs in order to minimize or change the quality of his ongoing self-awareness of his behavior and feelings. Notice that while the individuals in the above examples are attempting to avoid verbal content, they are doing so by undermining the verbal processes involved in ongoing self-awareness.
Ongoing self-awareness is a form of contact with the present moment, and it often takes willingness and acceptance to notice painful content. Ongoing self-awareness can be brought into the treatment room through the therapist asking questions such as “What are you experiencing right now?” Similarly, when the client is lost in verbal content, the therapist can ask, “What are you experiencing right now?” and in most cases the client will notice avoidance or numbness and a lack of vitality in contact with the conceptualized self as compared to ongoing self-awareness. Defusion techniques can be used to increase focus on the process (for example, “I’m having the thought that …” while minimizing attachment to content.
Self as Perspective
Self as perspective (also called self as context), or the observing self, can be thought of as “the context in which private events such as thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations occur” (Hayes, Strosahl, Bunting, et al., 2004, p. 9). As a context, self as per- spective lacks content and does not have the same thinglike quality as verbal content. This transcendent quality makes it difficult to talk about the sense of self as perspective without getting lost in a tangle of words. Instead, the therapist facilitates experiencing the observing self through exercises, metaphors, and mindfulness practice. This sense of self is immutable and has no boundaries. It is the experience of self that has always been there, and where thoughts, feelings, and sensations are distinct from the “I” having the thoughts, feelings, and sensations (Strosahl, Hayes, Wilson, & Gifford, 2004, pp. 44–45). The sense of self as perspective is not unique to ACT. Other traditions have different names for it. It is integral to many religious and spiritual traditions, and is especially associated with Buddhism. ACT therapists often borrow metaphors and exer- cises from this tradition. For instance, Hayes et al. (1999, p. 187) use a metaphor of the relationship between the clouds and the sky borrowed from the writings of Baba Ram
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Dass to describe the relationship between self as content and self as context. In this metaphor, the observing self is likened to the sky—it is always there even when we do not see it because it is obscured by clouds. Verbal content is like clouds that may be absent at times, or little and not very noticeable, or thick and big enough to completely obscure our view of the sky. Yet even though the sky isn’t visible, we know that it is there and we don’t need to move the clouds in order to know that it’s there. Similarly, from the sense of self as context we can notice verbal content as well as notice verbal processes without being attached to them, needing them to change, or seeing them as the real or true self.
Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön describes the experience of self as context as “egoless- ness” and says (2000),
The acknowledgment of egolessness, our natural state, is like regaining eye- sight after having been blind, or regaining hearing after having been deaf. Egolessness has been compared to the rays of the sun. With no solid sun, the rays just radiate outward. In the same way, wakefulness radiates out when we’re not so concerned with ourselves. Egolessness is the same thing as basic goodness or buddha nature, our unconditional being. It’s what we always have and never really lose. (p. 62)
Her description nicely captures the transcendent nature of self as context and its contentlessness, and many (though not all) evaluate contacting the observing self as a pleasant experience.
Experiencing self as perspective is often powerful for clients and can be a boon to willingness and acceptance. Self as perspective is a safe place from which one can see content and experience it for what it is. From this place, content is less threatening as one can experience the distinction between content and the self as context. Negatively evaluated experience is less threatening when one can distinguish thoughts from the thinker and feelings from the feeler (Strosahl et al., 2004, p. 44). Acceptance is more likely when thoughts and feelings are viewed in this way because the individual feels
less pressure to avoid and struggle with negatively evaluated content when it is seen as merely content rather than as the essence of the self.