Ebook: The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of George Herbert Mead

Unwilling to publish his work until he was certain of its accuracy—and convinced that certainty was virtually impossible—George Herbert Mead left much of his thought to be passed down in the form of class or lecture notes prepared by himself and former students. The Individual and the Social Self presents two sets of these notes, one of Mead's unpublished essays, and two unpublished essays of uncertain authorship.

None of these materials represent duplications of Mead's earlier published works. Rather, though they may treat similar subjects, they do so from new points of view. Thus the 1914 lecture notes help us see more clearly Mead's thoughts on the relationship between attitudes and gestures and on what is meant by social behaviorism. The notes from 1927 (differing significantly from those found in Mind, Self, and Society) account for the nature and genesis of the self. In the essay "Consciousness, Mind, the Self, and Scientific Objects," Mead is concerned with several points, including the meaning of consciousness and its "loss," as well as its implications for the distinction between reflective and perceptual consciousness. The two final essays clarify one of Mead's greatest insights, that "language gesture or the significant symbol arise when an individual evokes in himself, by his gesture, the same (i.e., functionally identical) response that he evokes in an other."

In an introduction prepared for this volume, David L. Miller—one of Mead's former students and a leading scholar of his works—indicates items of special note to be found within each section. He also places each piece within the context of Mead's work as a whole.