William James (1890) made an important distinction between the 'I' (the private inner self) and the 'Me' (the self as an object of self reflexive thought), and argued that the latter had material, spiritual and social aspects. He famously argued that we have as many selves as there are people about whose opinions we care, and so the self changes from one situation to another. This view was to influence the work of Cooley (1909) who spoke of the 'Looking Glass Self' - a reflection of the imagined judgments about ourselves made by other people (cf.ac.uk). For people with social phobia / social anxiety, this reflexive view of the self becomes central and distorted. That is to say that, in social situations the person with social anxiety becomes fixated on, and exaggerates the perceptions others may have. According to William James, to understand the "me," we may begin by dividing the history of it into three parts, relating respectively to-its constitue...
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