Florilegios y notas de estudio (II). Mead, G. H. (1962): Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social behaviorist. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

[Quisiera compartirles citas intercaladas con notas de estudio sobre algunos textos que he analizado en mis jornadas de lectura e investigación. Estas citas y notas provienen de mis ficheros de estudio, aquí no están organizadas sistemáticamente por conceptos, empresa que sólo podría emprender con determinados autores que he de estudiar más detenida y sistemáticamente. Algunos textos o temas específicos han sido diagramados y analizados también en mapas mentales o cuadros sinópticos, los cuales agregaré en el caso de haberlos realizado o también los compartiré en entradas posteriores. El fin básico que me propongo es compartir y socializar estos pasajes y horizontes de análisis, más allá de mis cuadernos de notas físicos y virtuales. Un abrazo. JL].

Mead, G. H. (1962): Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social behaviorist.  Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

• "Language is part of social behavior" (1962: 13).
• "One thinks, but one thinks in terms of language" (1962: 3).
• "Psychology became in turn associational, motor, functional, and finally behavioristic" (1962: 21).
• "A behavioristic psychology represents a definite tendency rather than a system, a tendency to state as fas as posible the conditions under which the experience of the individual arises. Correlation gets its expression in parallelism" (1962: 38). 
• "Psychology is not something that deals with consciousness; psychology deals with the experience of the individual in its relation to the conditions under which experience goes on. It is social psychology where the conditions are social ones. It is behavioristic where the approach to experience is made through conduct" (1962: 41). 
• "The vocal gesture becomes a significant symbol (unimportant, as such, on the merely effective side of experience) when it has the same effect on the individual making it that it has on the individual to whom it is addressed or who explicitly responds to it, and thus involves a reference to the self of the individual making it" (1962: 46). 
• "The body is not a self, as such; it becomes a self only when it has developed a mind within the context of social experience. [...] Mind arises through communication by a conversation of gestures in a social process or context of experience- not communication through mind" (Mead, 1962: 50).
• "What language seems to carry is a set of symbols answering to certain content wich is measurably identical in the experience of the different individuals. If there is to be communication as such the symbol has to be the same thing to all individuals involved" (1962: 54). 
• "There does, however, seem to be a tendency to imitate among men, and in particular to reproduce vocal gestures. [...] If you yo into a locality where there is a peculiar dialect and remain there for a length of time you find yourself speaking the same dialect, and it may be something which yo did not want to do. [...] The same thing is also true of various other mannerisms. If you think of a certain person you are very apt to find yourself speaking as the other person spoke. [...] That is what we call 'imitation'" (1962: 59).
• "In order that thought may exist there must be symbols, vocal gestures generally, which arouse in the individual himself the response which he is calling out in the other and such that from the point of view of that response he is able to direct his later conduct" (1962: 73). 
• "That is fundamental for any language; if it is going to be language one has understand what he is saying, has to affect himself as he affect others" (1982: 75).  
• "Thinking takes place in terms of universals, and a universal is an entity that is distinguishable from the object by means we think it" (1962: 88).
• "Meaning as such, i.e., the object of thought, arises in experience through the individual stimulating himself to take the attitude of the other in his reaction toward the object" (1962: 89).
• "The process of addressing another person is a process of addressing himself as well, and of calling out the response he calls out in another; and the person who is addressed, in so far as he is conscious of what he is doing, does himself tend to make use of the same vocal gesture and so to call out in himself the response which the other call out-at least to carry on the social process which involves that conduct" (1962: 109). 
• "Now, from the point of view of behavioristic psychology, we can state in terms of attitudes what we call the meaning of things; the organized attitude of the individual is that which psychologist gets hold of in this situation" (1962: 127). 
• "The mental process do not, however lie in words any more than the intelligence of the organism lies in the elements of the central nervous system. The symbol serve their part in this process, and it is that which makes communication so important. Out of language emerges the field of mind" (1962: 133). 
• "We must regard mind, then, as arising and developing within the social process, within the empirical matrix of social interactions" (1962: 133). 
• "Mind arises in the social process only when that process as a whole enters into, or is present in, the experience of any one of the given individuals involved in that process" (1962: 134). 
• "The self has a character which is different from that of the physiological organism proper. The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process" (1962: 135). 
• "The importance of what we term "communication" lies in the fact that it provides a form of behavior in which the organism or the individual may become an object to himself" (1962: 138). 
• "There are parts of the self which exist only for the self in relationship to itself. [...] The are all sorts of different selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions. A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal, as I have just pointed out" (1962: 142). 
• "The unity and structure of the complete self reflects the unity ans structure of the social process as a whole" (1962: 144). 
• "Our symbols are all universal. You cannot say anything that is absolutely particular; anything you say that has any meaning at all is universal" (1962: 146).
• "What is essential to communication is that the symbol should arouse in one´s self what it arouses in the other individual. It must have that sort of universality to any person who finds himself in the same situation" (1962: 149).
• "The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called "the generalized other". The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community" (1962: 154).
• "We have said that the internal conversation of the individual with himself in terms of words or significant gestures -the conversation which constitutes the process or activity of thinking -is carried on by the individual from the standpoint of the "generalized other". And the more abstract that conversation is, the more abstract thinking happens to be, the further removed is the generalized other from any connection with particular individuals" (1962: 156).
• "The self-conscious human individual, them takes or assumes the organized social attitudes of the given social group or community (or of some one section thereof) to which belongs" (1962: 156).  
• "A person is a personality because he belongs to a community, because he takes over the institutions of that community into his own conduct" (1962: 162). 
• "It is a structure of attitudes, then, which goes to make up a self, as distinct from a group of habits" (1962: 163).
• "We cannot be ourselves unless we are also members in whom there is a community of attitudes which control the attitudes of all"  (1962: 164).
• "A person may reach a point of going against the whole world about him; he may stand out by himself over against it. But to do that he has to speak with the voice of reason to himself. He has to comprehend the voices of the past and of the future. That is the only way in which the self can get a voice which is more than the voice of community" (1962: 168). 
• "The process of conversation is one in which the individual has not only the right but the duty of talking to the community of which he is a part, and bringing about those changes which take place through the interaction of individuals. That is the way, of course, in which society gets ahead, by just such interactions as those in which some person thinks a thing out. We are continually changing our social system in some respects, and we are able to do that intelligently because we can think" (Mead, 1962: 168). 
• "The "I" is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the "me" is the organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes. The attitudes of the others constitute the organized "me", and then one reacts toward that as an "I"" (1962: 175). 
• "The "I" is his action over against that social situation within his own conduct, and it gets into his experience only after he has carried out the act" (1962: 175).
• "The "I" gives the sense of freedom, of initiative" (1962: 177).
• "There would not be an "I" in the sense in which we use that term if there were not a "me"; there would not be a "me" without a responde in the form of the "I"" (1962: 182). 
• "Language would never have arisen as a set of bare arbitrary terms which were attached to certain stimuli. Words have arisen out of a social interrelationship" (1962: 189).
• "There cannot be symbols unless there are responses" (1962: 190).
• "Language, as made up of significant symbols is what we mean by mind" (1962: 190).
• "We cannot realize ourselves except in so far as we can recognize the other in his relationship to us. It is as he takes the attitude of the other that individual is able to realize himself as self" (1962: 194). 
• "One attains self-consciousness only as he takes, or find himself stimulated to take, the attitude of the other" (1962: 194). 
• "When self does appear in experience it appears over against the other" (1962: 195).
• "Over against the "me" is the "I". The individual not only has right, but he has duties; he is not only a citizen, a member of the community, but he is one who reacts to this community and in his reaction to it, as we have seen in the conversation of gestures, changes it" (1962: 196). 
• "Practically, of course, the novel is constantly happening and the recognition of this gets its expression in more general terms in the concept of emergence. Emergence involves a reorganization, but the reorganization brings in something that was not there before" (1962: 198). 
• "The common language is there, but a different use of it is made in every new contact between persons; the element of novelty in the reconstruction takes place through the reaction of the individuals to the group to which the belong" (1962: 198). 
• "Now, it is that reaction of the individual to the organized "me", the "me" that is in a certain sense simply a member of the community, which represents the "I" in the experience of the self" (1962: 199). 
• "One must take the attitude of the others in a group in order to belong a community; he has to employ that outer social world taken within himself in order to carry on thought. It is through his relationship to others in that community, that he has being a citizen" (1962: 199). 
• "The widest community in which the individual finds himself, that which is everywhere, through and for everybody, is the thought of world as such" (1962: 201). 
• "If we use a Freudian expression, the "me" is in a certain sense a censor. It determines the sort of expression which can take place, sets the stages, and gives the cue" (1962: 210). 
• "An institution is, after all, nothing but an organization of attitudes which we all carry in us, the organized attitudes of the others that control and determine conduct" (1962: 211). 
• "The value of an orderer society is essential to our existence, but there also has to be room for an expression of the individual himself if there is to be a satisfactorily developed society. A means for such expression must be provided" (1962: 221). 
• "Our contention is that mind can never find expression, and could never have come into existence at all, except in terms of a social environment" (1962: 223).
• "Human society as we know it could not exist without minds and selves, since all its most characteristic features presuppose the possession of minds and selves by its individual members" (1962: 227). 
• "Human society, then, is depedent upon the development of language for its own distinctive form of organization" (1962: 235)". 
• "Speech and the hand go along together in the development of the social human being" (1962: 237).
• "I have stressed the point that the process of communication is nothing but an elaboration of the peculiar intelligence with which the vertebrate form is endowed" (1962: 243). 
• "A human individual is able to indicate to himself what the other person is going to do, and then to take his attitude on the basis of that indication. He can analyze his act and reconstruct it by means of this process" (1962: 244). 
• "The community as such creates its environment by being sensitive to it" (1962: 250). 
• "The principle which I hace suggested as basic to human social organization is that of communication involving participation in the other" (1962: 253).
• "The very organization of the self-conscious community is dependent upon individuals taking the attitude of the other individuals" (1962: 256). 
• "The process of communication is one which is more universal than that of the universal religion or universal economic process in that it is one that serves the both" (1962: 259). 
• "There cannot be a community which is larger than that represented by rationality" (1962: 266). 
• "It is the unity of the whole social process that is the unity of the individual, and social control of the individual lies in this common process which is going on, a process which differentiates the individual in his particular function while at the same time controlling his reaction" (1962: 270).
• "Language provides a universal community which is something like the economic community" (1962: 283).
• "A person learns a new language and, as we say, gets a new soul. He puts himself into the attitude of those that make use of that language" (1962: 283). 
• "There are, in fact, various forms of democracy government; but democracy, in the sense here relevant, is an attitude which depends upon the type of self which goes with the universal relations of brotherhood, however that be reached" (1962: 286). 
• "We are able to able to hold on the ourselves to be a little things; in the ways in which we feel ourselves to be a little superior. If we find ourselves defeated at some point we take refuge in feeling that somebody else is not as good as we are. Any person can find those little supports for what is called his self respect" (1962: 315).