Self refers to the constitutional, emergent sense of being through which a person comes to experience continuity within and between sensation, perception, and interpretation. It is the embodied vitality and potentiated coherence of physiological, psychological, and relational experience across past, present, and prospective time, within and between Self, Other(s), and the World around us.
Self is a dynamic movement of aliveness and beingness, shaped through context, relationship, and the ongoing organisation of experience. It develops through a living balance of connection and separation, allowing the person to come into a more connected, coherent, and continuous sense of being.
Within this movement, Self may be understood as the dynamic interplay of Myself, I, and Me. Myself is the ground of embodied being, the felt sense through which experience is first lived. I is the subjective and knowing movement of Self, the perceiving, experiencing, and agentic subject who orients toward what is emerging. Me is the recognised and interpreted Self, the represented form through which experience becomes known, named, and held in awareness. Together, these movements give shape to a sense of Self that is able to feel, know, reflect, and remain in relation to an Other and the World.
When these movements are sufficiently linked through relational-regulatory-responses that maintain the balanced counterpoints of separation and connection, Self carries contextual coherence, allowing experience to be sensed, perceived, interpreted, and lived with greater continuity across time, place, and relationship. When development is disrupted, aspects of Self may become disconnected, dissociated, or structurally separated, compromising the continuity through which a person feels fully themselves.
Self is therefore the dynamic, continuous sense of being, the emergent organisation through which a person comes to experience themselves as connected, coherent, and continuous within and between Self, Other(s), and the World around us.
