What Do We Mean by “the Self”?自我的含义

Past and Present Understandings of “The Self” 过去与现在对“自我”的理解

Philosophers and scientists have been talking about the self for all of recorded human history. Ancient Greek writers recorded that the temple at Delphi was inscribed with the text “Gnothi Seauton,” or “Know Thyself” (Wilkins, 1929). Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Lao Tzu, Adi Shankara, Rene Descartes, and David Hume have written extensively about the relationship between the self and the soul. They’ve disagreed about whether the self is a single construct within a person or if a person contains multiple selves. They’ve asked whether the self should be equated with conscious thought or if there is something more to the self. More recently, scholars who straddled the border between philosophy and psychology, such as William James, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Sigmund Freud, have expressed their opinions about the nature and contents of the self.
哲学家和科学家一直在讨论自我，这贯穿了整个人类有记录的历史。古希腊作家记录了德尔斐神庙上刻有“认识你自己”或“知己”的文字（威尔金斯，1929 年）。苏格拉底、柏拉图、老子、阿迪·商卡拉、勒内·笛卡尔和大卫·休谟等哲学家广泛地探讨了自我与灵魂之间的关系。他们对于自我是否是一个人内的单一结构，或者一个人是否包含多个自我存在分歧。他们询问自我是否应该等同于意识思考，或者自我是否还有更多内容。最近，一些跨越哲学和心理学边界的学者，如威廉·詹姆斯、玛丽·惠顿·卡尔金斯和西格蒙德·弗洛伊德，就自我的本质和内容表达了自己的观点。

Most relevant to our current conceptualization of the self, William James (1890) described the self as comprising two components: the self as an object and the self as a subject. Put in everyday terms, “the self as an object” suggests that people observe and create judgments about the self. On the other hand, “the self as a subject” suggests that it is the self’s job to control our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Although James wrote about this topic more than 100 years ago, his perspective on the self’s role in psychology is similar to and compatible with our modern views.
与我们对自我的当前概念化最相关的是，威廉·詹姆斯（1890 年）将自我描述为包含两个组成部分：作为对象的自我和作为主体的自我。用日常用语来说，“作为对象的自我”意味着人们观察并对自己做出判断。另一方面，“作为主体的自我”意味着控制我们的思想、情感和行为是自我的职责。尽管詹姆斯在 100 多年前就写了关于这个话题，但他对自我在心理学中作用的观点与现代观点相似且兼容。

We will advance a view that the self has two components: the self as a knower (similar to James’ self as an object perspective) and the self as a doer (similar to James’ self as a subject). When we talk about the self as a knower, we’re really talking about how the self contains knowledge about the self. That is, as we were told to do by the inscription at Delphi, the self collects and stores information about what the self is like. Knowledge about our own preferences, abilities, and history is all part of the self. In contrast, when talking about the self as doer, we’re talking about all of the actions (physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral) that the self can take. 
我们将提出一个观点，即自我有两个组成部分：作为知识者的自我（类似于詹姆斯的自我作为对象视角）和作为行动者的自我（类似于詹姆斯的自我作为主体）。当我们谈论作为知识者的自我时，我们实际上是在谈论自我如何包含关于自我的知识。也就是说，正如德尔菲的铭文所教导我们的那样，自我收集并存储关于自我是什么样的信息。关于我们自己的偏好、能力和历史的知识都是自我的一部分。相比之下，当我们谈论作为行动者的自我时，我们是在谈论自我可以采取的所有行动（包括身体、心理、情感和行为）。

In this course, we’ve chosen clear, descriptive terms to represent the idea of the self as a knower and the self as a doer. To tie our current language about the self back to James’ historical terminology talking about the self as a knower and a doer, we will refer to the self as a collection of information and a set of processes, respectively. The rest of this module will explain in more detail what these terms mean, and talk about how psychologists study each one.
在这门课程中，我们选择了清晰、描述性的术语来代表作为知识者的自我和作为行动者的自我这一概念。为了将我们关于自我的当前语言与詹姆斯关于作为知识者和行动者的自我的历史术语联系起来，我们将分别将自我称为信息集合和过程集合。本模块的其余部分将更详细地解释这些术语的含义，并讨论心理学家如何研究每一个方面。

Source: https://www.coursera.org/learn/psychology-of-the-self/supplement/i6Mcc/what-do-we-mean-by-the-self