The universe has never run out of wonderful mysteries, and perhaps one of the greatest mysteries that we will never grow weary of exploring is the mystery of life. In Biology, we learn of the many ways through which life manifests itself in our planet. In Taxonomy, we learn that there are, under different classes and kingdoms, thousands and thousands of names that we use to refer to living things, be it animal, bacteria, protist, or any other life form. This background and context only makes more interesting another one of those mysteries of the universe that we have pondered and will continue to ponder on: our being, and more interestingly, our becoming human.
Of all the living creatures known it is only we, humans, who have free will, reason and the capability to rationalize, and who have a concept of what is wrong and what is right. This characteristic distinct to us has long been the fascination of many disciplines, ranging from science to religion to philosophy to psychology and to sociology. In particular, being and becoming human is interesting because we are the only ones who as a species have to first learn from our fellow humans to be able to know what to do, how to act, and how to behave in relation to our society’s culture.
According to Tylor (in O’Neil, 2006), “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” Our culture is where we rely on to define our society, and in turn, ourselves; as we are born fundamentally as animals with animalistic instincts, we have to be initiated into the culture of the society and this network of beliefs, traditions and codes to function and contribute as members of it. Socialization is this process through which we explore, discover, and learn about our roles in society to be accepted into it, and this includes shifting from having animalistic instincts to developing our personalities.
The term Socialization is used to refer to our lifelong process of acquiring human traditions, beliefs, and culture to be able to function as a member of the society. This term is used by a wide range of practitioners, from sociologists, political scientists, human ecologists, and anthropologists. Simply put, it is our process of becoming human by learning from others. It is the process of the development of our personalities in accordance to our society’s culture.
Socialization could be approached through the two fields of specializations which most use the term. While Psychology places the emphasis on the individual’s psyche and how it is affected by other factors, Sociology places the emphasis on how the society and the dynamics of its various components influence the individual. There are also a number of theorists associated with the theory of socialization they have formulated.
Freud’s Theory of Socialization
While there are quite a number of theories on socialization, we can focus on the most prominent and influential theories, starting from Freud’s theory of socialization.
One of the most famous and influential thinkers and the father of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed that the human psyche could be divided into three components: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego (Sulloway, 1992). The Id refers to the part of the psyche that is instinct- and pleasure-driven and primitive and exists mainly to gratify our wants and desires; the Ego is refers to the behavior and thoughts that control the Id. In our waking life we exercise the Ego where we are rational; the Superego is the so-called moral component of the psyche. He believed that these three components were crucial to the personality development of a person.
He also divided the stages of personality development into five different psychosexual stages, namely: the Oral Stage, Anal Stage, Phallic Stage, Latency Stage, and Genital Stage (Saracho & Spodek, Ed., 2007).
The Oral Stage refers to the first few months of life where the human seeks to satisfy the mouth; this manifests in the act of chewing, sucking, and biting. The Anal Stage manifests through acts of elimination and retention. The Phallic Stage is centered on the gratification of the genitalia. The Latency Stage refers to a stage of dormancy or repression of psychosexual desires, and the Genital Stage refers to the maturing of sexual desires (Freud in Plotnik & Kouyoumdjian, 2013). These are all according to Freud who has observed that during certain stages in a child’s life he or she is focused on a particular part of the body. Freud believes that these stages point towards the personality and psychosexuality of an adult human, or that the behavior, thoughts and emotions of adult humans could be traced to their fixations on a particular stage of their personality development.
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
Erik Erikson extended Freud’s psychoanalysis through his Psychosocial theory and stated that the Ego exercising its control over us from late infancy to late adulthood influences how we proceed to the next stage or how we proceed to be fixated on one stage, and that these stages are influenced in turn by our interaction with our social environment (Saracho & Spodek, Ed., 2007).
In Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development, one first has to fulfill the requirements of the current stage before proceeding to the next stage. The stages include the following: The Hope Stage, where the infant seeks to gratify his or her immediate need for sustenance from his or her parents; this is also referred to as the Trust vs. Mistrust stage. The Will Stage refers to the child’s realization of his or her ability to exercise will at the development of his or her motor abilities. The Purpose Stage refers to the child’s realization that his or her actions, as a result of his or her will, are motivated by a purpose, coinciding with the child’s realization that structures have functions. The Competence Stage, which happens around elementary school, refers to child’s desire for the recognition of authority such as his or her teachers, parents and friends. The Fidelity Stage refers to the adolescent’s struggle to establish him/herself apart from others and create his/her own identity. The Love Stage occurs around the age of 30 and is most concerned with the desire to fit in a group, a standard, or an identity to feel integrated into the society instead of isolated. The Care Stage is concerned with generativity; the pressure upon the person is to establish him/herself as someone who can contribute to the continuity of the society. The last stage is the Wisdom Stage, where our sense of fulfillment is obtained after retrospection.
Erikson and Freud’s theories are referred to as Psychodynamic theory.
Cooley’s Looking Glass Self
In 1902, sociologist Charles Holston Cooley coined the term “looking glass self” in his book Human Nature and the Social Order, where he argues that the society is a web of people’s mental states and perceptions of themselves and others, and that the social self is a summation of other peoples’ ideas and expectations of our behavior and actions. Simply put, Cooley believed that we defined ourselves and behaved according to how we think people judged us or expected or compelled us to behave.
There are three stages in the Looking Glass Self Theory. According to Cooley, first we imagine how we appear to others, then we imagine how others react to our appearance of us to them, and lastly, we form our judgments of ourselves based on the (imagined) judgments of us.
Mead’s Social Psychological Theory
George Herbert Mead, an American pragmatist, used the social psychological approach to theorize about socialization and personal development. Reiterating the relationship between the mind, the society and the self, Mead emphasized that although the self is developed and gradually defined according to how we think we are perceived by others, we do not necessary consider all judgments from others, but take into account only that of those we deem significant to us; or, we use our value judgment to take into account that some people’s opinions are more important than others’. Furthermore, he argues that the self is formed in, and emerges from, a social process and that the self should not be studied apart from this social process or order.
The four stages of socialization and personal development according to Mead: Imitation, the Playstage, the Gamestage, and the emergence of the Generalizaed Other. The Imitation Stage involves the act of roletaking. When the individual puts him/herself in the shoes of others, he/she is allows him/herself to use the viewpoints of others. For the second stage, the roletaking and playing allows the child to know others’ roles to be able to properly play the role that he/she takes. The individual can only take one role at a time and cannot yet make the distinction from him/herself and the role that he/she is playing, but learns how to adjust by others’ roles. For the Gamestage, the individual proceeds to be able to play several roles at the same time. The last stage where the Generalized Other emerges refers to the stage where the individual has fully acquired the ideas, values, and traditions of the society and is finally integrated into the society as a “normalized” member of it. This new self is what is referred to the Generalized Other.
There are other theorists and influential thinkers that have shaped our way of looking at how humans develop their personalities and selves. These are only some the few that are most prominent. All of them have contributed to the development of our understanding of our becoming and being human.
References
Cooley, C.H. (1902). Human nature and the social order. New York: Scribner’s.
Freud, S. in Plotnik, R. & Kouyoumdjian, H. (2013). Introduction to Psychology. Cengage Learning.
Mead, G.H., (1934) in Cronk, G. (n.d.). George Herbert Mead. In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 17 November 2014 from http://www.iep.utm.edu/mead/#H3.
Saracho, O.N. & Spodek, B. (Ed.). (2007). Contemporary perspectives on socialization and social development in early childhood education. USA: Information Age Publishing.
Sulloway, F. (1992). Freud, biologist of the mind. USA: Harvard University Press.
Tylor, E.B. (1981), in O’Neil, D. (2006). What is culture? Retrieved 17 November 2014 from http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/culture_1.htm.
