Self (Philosophy)

Only The Body Remembers is a collection of poems, lyric essays, and short stories
that explore several subjects, including love (both romantic and familial), loss, grief,
sexuality, identity, and obsession. The primary thematic thread that binds this collection
together is somatic memory -- the way the body records experiences, and the strong
emotional charge these recorded experiences carry.

The current study investigated the interpretation of an agent's actions under the influence of external forces. Participants viewed a series of videos of an agent making a varying series of decisions and forced behaviors and were asked to predict future behavior. Firstly, we found evidence that suggests that perceivers make inferences about an agent that once they have shown a preference toward an object, they will persist with those initial desires, despite, external forces leading them to a different object. Secondly, we found evidence that suggests that submitting to a coerced choice will be perceived as reflecting a conflicting combination of pragmatic behavioral choice (due to concession to external forces) and maintenance of original desires, or, simply put, perceivers infer multiple underlying intentions in others.

This study examined the empirical relationship between narcissism and self-esteem in an attempt to evaluate competing conceptualizations of narcissism. Participants were 236 children (mean age 11.3 years) in the fourth through eighth grades. Counter to earlier conceptions, which characterized narcissism as very high self-esteem, narcissism and self-esteem were slightly negatively correlated. Also, narcissism predicted several adjustment variables, including aggression. None of these relationships was mediated by self-esteem. Lastly, self-esteem moderated the relationship between narcissism and aggression in boys. Taken together, these lines of evidence point to a new conceptualization of narcissism, modeled after self-discrepancy theory, in which narcissism is conceptualized as grandiosity in the ideal self. Implications of this proposal and directions for future research are discussed.