Building, Defending, and Regulating the Self: A Psychological Perspective

Much has been written on the self in modern psychology, but rarely are so many fresh perspectives found between the covers of a single volume. Tesser, Wood, and Stapel have organized some of the field's excellent thinkers and writers and produced a book that tackles enduring issues in new ways: How malleable is the self? What about one's identity is genuine? How tied up is the self in considerations of conscious experience? Under what conditions is the self defensive to the point of delusion? In the spirit of Narcissus, we all love to reflect on the self, and this volume will help students and investigators do so in intriguing new ways. - Peter Salovey, Yale University

In the last 20 years, research on the self has grown from street musician to corporate status. Abe Tesser and his colleagues are partly responsible for this explosion of interest. Now, with the publication of their most recent edited volume on the self, Tesser, Wood, and Stapel bring a structure to this increasingly complex research domain. The eleven chapters reflect three often-conflicting assumptions of the self -- self-as-good (Carl Rogers), self-as-bad (Freud), and self-as-self-regulating-blank-slate (Locke). The editors have assembled a phenomenal group of researchers in social psychology who are superb scientists and writers. This is an excellent book. - James W. Pennebaker, University of Texas at Austin