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Dan P. McAdams is a psychologist known for his contribution to the field of narrative psychology, a field of psychology which concerns itself with the psychological value of stories in constructing our existence.   In this work, McAdams examines how we construct our identity through a personal story, a narrative, to create a sense of self. We will examine how this story is created and how it might be constructed to close our inquiry to self.

In the second episode to our inquiry to the concept of self, we will be taking a look at Erving Goffmans classic work, The presentation of self in everyday life. We will examine how Goffman saw that people express and manage their presentations of their self in social interactions, which he examined using dramaturgical analysis. By making an analogy between theater and real life, Goffman opens a window to just how much we resemble actors and performers in our daily interactions with each others.

George Herbert Mead was a social psychologists, who's seen as one of the founders of an approach called symbolic interactionism. Mead didn't (unfortunately) publish any books during he's own lifetime. However, he's ideas are represented in Mind, Self & Society, which is constructed through various sources, such as notes taken by his students attending he's  lectures.     Mind, Self & Society has established itself as a essential work of social science. In the work he sketches out his theory of the self, which Mead saw as a product of socialization. Even thought the work has faced its criticism, it is still a great intellectual achievement, which guarantees to wake up some hibernating  braincells.

Émile Durkheim was a french sociologist who's works have left a tremendous mark on how we interpret, approach and analyze society. In this episode, we will take a look at his work, On Suicide, one of the greatest works of sociology.     In this episode we will stumble on concepts such as social facts and anomie as we take a look at how Durkheim approached the issue of suicide. Is suicide a produce of the individual, something to be explained as a consequence of internal forces, or is the individual affected by something outside of him, by something external, that encourages self-destructive behavior? 

Max Weber belongs to the names that create the foundation of sociology. In this classic work, Weber examines the relation between reformation and the creation of the spirit of capitalism. Along the work he sets out a idealistic perspective to examine historical progression of society and broadens the sociological perspective by introducing a way to connect two seemingly distinct societal phenomenons to each other. 

Arthur Schopenhauer belongs to the list of great thinkers that roamed the world in the 19th century.  Schopenhauer can be described as the main figure of philosophical pessimism or at least one of them. Why? Well, existence seems to be a glass half-empty, if the glass ever even had anything. In this work, Arthur Schopenhauer builds on Immanuel Kants transcendental idealism, as he argues that the noumenal world, which by Kant was deemed impossible to know, is reacheable. What Kant described as thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer recognizes as will. Well, what exactly is this will that Schopenhauer talks about and how does it affect us? "At bottom it is one being that perceives itself and is perceived by itself, but whose being-in-itself cannot consist either in perceiving or in being perceived"

C. Wright Mills is one of the best known sociologists of the 20th century. Hes works analyzed power and different structures of society. However, hes idea of sociological imagination has become a core idea of sociology and could be described as sociology 101. In this episode we will examine what sociological imagination as a concept means and how did it differ from other sociological approaches of its time. "‘Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both."

Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the best known works of Freuds. Its also one of his most comprehensive works as much of his theories were introduced and created before it. Thus it seems that in this work Freud isnt so much discovering anything new, instead his using his ideas and works to analyze a larger structure. What Freud analyzes in this work is not the mind of an individual but rather the "mind" of the culture. How does it work? How can it exist? Why can we live in such large communities? What is the psychological foundation of society?     "We cannot see the necessity that forces culture along this path and gives rise to its antagonism to sexuality. It must be due to some disturbing influence not yet detected by us."

Rapid development of technology, Russian revolution, World War I, rapid development of psychology and medicine. A lot happened in the early parts of the 20th century, a lot that raised eyebrows towards the future. What does it hold inside for humankind? There were optimistic hope and then there was skepticism. Aldous Huxleys Brave New World probably belongs to the ladder approach.    Brave New World is a dystopian social science fiction novel that has developed to be a must read for everyone. It depicts a futuristic state where people have become voluntary slaves of dopamine and happiness. Life is nothing but comfort. But at what price? The whole structure of values has been turned upside down. Monogamy, god, loyalty, bravery, family, love, nobility, empathy and most importantly meaning seems to have lost their value and vanish. So we ask: what is a life of just happiness and what does it cost?     “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." This sentence alone has had a deep influence on feminist theory. Who wrote it? Simone de Beauvoir, a french existentialist, a philosopher, the writer of Second Sex, the classic work of feminism.    In this classic, Beauvoir seeks to find the answer to how did women gain the role of the other, or in different words, why is there inequality between the sexes? Is there psychological, biological, historical explanations for her conditions? Why has these conditions been accepted by women or generations of women? Is it nature or nurture? As we go through this journey we will stumble on the concept of the other, to historical materialism and Freud, to the idea that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,  the first time that the idea of sex-gender distinction was formulated.      “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.”

Why do we do what we do? A question asked by many and to which have been responded in different ways. Maybe we are driven by the pleasure principle, by our feelings, by our conscience, or as Skinner suspected, by reinforcements.   B. F. Skinner was an american psychologist, a pioneer of the behaviorist position. His output on the field of psychology is unquestioned. His work is teached, read and listened in every corner of the world and for good reason. Following the footsteps of early behaviorists, such as Pavlov and Watson, Skinner developed the behaviorist position and left a great mark in science and contributed greatly on how we understand and observe behavior. In this episode, we will take a look at the position of radical behaviorism and look at concepts such as operant conditioning, reinforcements, verbal behavior and much more as we sum up Skinners contributions to psychology through his work, About Behaviorism.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a genevan philosopher, was a great influence on the movement known as Enlightenment. Through his political, educational and economic ideas, he gained a lot of admiration, and nowadays hes works are recognized as essential parts of the western history of philosophy.     Before Emile or Social contract, Rousseau wrote his work, Discourse on inequality or as its also commonly known, the Second discourse, as he entered into the competition held by the Academy of Dijon. The question that the participants needed to answer in their essay was the following: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law? The essay he wrote for the competition has become a philosophical classic (even though it didnt get the first place in the competition) known as the Discourse on the origin of inequality. Building on his previous ideas, that the human being is benevolent by nature, Rousseau seeks to explain what is it that exactly causes inequality and maltreatment that exist between persons. What is it that makes the person corrupt?          "In fact, the real source of all those differences, is that the savage lives within himself, whereas the citizen, constantly beside himself, knows only how to live in the opinion of others; insomuch that it is, if I may say so, merely from their judgment that he derives the consciousness of his own existence."