11 - The role of feelings for an interpersonal self

Summary

The interpersonal self at issue in this volume is conceived as the result of direct perception of the relationship between the self and another person. It is derived from the ongoing, unreflected, coordinated, social interactions with another human being, which provide objective information that is directly available to the participants (see Neisser in this volume). Thus a major task for exploring the interpersonal self is to specify the perceived nature of the coordinated interaction with another, and how it differs from the interactions we have with inanimate things, ideas, our physical selves, our own mental phenomena (e.g., memories), or other phenomena.

Many specific aspects of the interpersonal situation might lead to the apperception of an interpersonal self, such as contingent responsivity of the partner, specialized gestures that are adapted or have evolved for human communication, sharing human time scales, intentionality, and the like. Other chapters of this volume cover these in some detail. I wish to focus on another aspect of the interpersonal situation – namely, the evoking, the sharing, and the mutual regulation of feelings. In fact, I shall argue that that these specifying aspects of the interpersonal self are perhaps most deeply at its core.