The Subjective Self

For all their strides in understanding how we create and think about cultures, psychologists, linguists, and logicians have had difficulty explaining how we conceive our selves - how the self can, in fact, be both the object and the subjective originator of its surroundings. Harwood Fisher's purpose in this far-reaching, interdisciplinary book is to depict the subjective self in its true complex duality. In The Subjective Self, Fisher argues that the key to depicting both aspects of the self simultaneously and thus modelling it more holistically than before is to visualise the self iconically as a logical space in which its metaphorical and categorical objects are projected, ordered, and reorderable. This process involves "metaphoric framing," in which experiences, impressions, and information are processed and ordered through a pyramidal organisation of mental categories and then projected into mental space, where they become objectified. In elaborating this theory, Fisher extends the ideas of Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, and C. S. Peirce, among others. By drawing on each of these thinkers, he is able to bring together the common themes of perspective and construction in a logical space - the self - and to apply the roles of categorisation and schematisation to the processes of originating and representing affect and thought. Remarkably wide-ranging - with references to technical psychological publications, classical philosophy and science, and literary texts and works of art - his work broadly challenges and expands how we "see" and represent ourselves. Harwood Fisher is a professor emeritus at City College of the City University of New York, School of Education, Social and Psychological Foundations. He is the author of Language and Logic in Personality and Society and chief editor of Developments in High School Psychology.