Society in the Self

In this book, Hubert Hermans, internationally known as the creator of the dialogical self theory, launches a new and original theory in which he links society with the most intimate regions of self and identity. The basic assumption is that the self is organized as an inner society that is simultaneously functioning as part of the society at large as exemplified by developments like self-sabotage, self-radicalization, self-cure, self-government, self-nationalization, and self-internationalization. The book makes even a more radical step. It not only deals with the societal organization of the self but also poses the challenging question whether the self is democratically organized. To what extent do the different self-parts (e.g. roles, emotions, imagined others) receive freedom of expression? To what extent are they treated as equal or equivalent components of the self? The question is posed how the self, in its organizing capacity, responds to the apparent tension between freedom and equality in both the self and society. The theory has far-reaching consequences for such divergent topics as leadership in the self; cultural diversity in the self; the relationship between reason and emotion; self-empathy;, cooperation and competition between self-parts; and the role of social power in prejudice, enemy image construction, and scapegoating. The volume concludes with a trailblazing discussion of cosmopolitan, deliberative, and agonistic models of democracy and their consequences for a democratically organized self in a boundary-crossing society.