The Perceived Self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-Knowledge

Neisser's central claim is that self-perception, both ecological and social, is the earliest and most fundamental form of self-knowledge [citation:1][citation:13]. The book rejects the assumption that self-knowledge begins with a self-concept or narrative constructed through memory and social feedback. Instead, Neisser argues that the ecological self—based on direct perception of one's situation in the environment—and the interpersonal self—established by species-specific signals of emotional rapport—appear in early infancy, long before anything like a self-concept or self-narrative is possible [citation:1][citation:13]. The volume's fifteen contributors elaborate on these notions, extending the framework to topics ranging from infant development to autism, blindness, dance, and non-verbal communication [citation:1][citation:13].

The ecological self concerns the relationship between the physical self and the physical environment, focusing on the individual as an active, causal agent in the world [citation:4]. Neisser draws on J.J. Gibson's ecological approach to perception, particularly Gibson's argument that the self and environment are always coperceived [citation:12]. The information for this aspect of self is perceptual: one directly perceives oneself as acting within an environment, without requiring inference or conceptual mediation [citation:4]. Contributors to the volume elaborate this notion, with one chapter explicitly arguing for 'the primacy of the ecological self' and reversing Gibson's maxim to claim that to perceive oneself is, except in peculiar circumstances, to coperceive the world [citation:15]. The ecological self thus grounds self-knowledge in direct, non-inferential perceptual information.

The Perceived Self extends and elaborates Neisser's 1988 article 'Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge,' which proposed that self-knowledge is based on five distinct forms of information, each establishing a different 'self': the ecological, interpersonal, extended, private, and conceptual selves [citation:16]. The 1993 volume focuses specifically on the first two—the ecological and interpersonal selves—which Neisser argues are directly perceived and appear in early infancy [citation:1][citation:13]. The later selves, such as the extended self based on memory and the conceptual self based on socially-based assumptions, are not the primary focus. The book thus represents a deepening rather than a revision of the 1988 framework, exploring the perceptual foundations that precede and ground the more familiar narrative and conceptual selves [citation:5].

The book emerged from two conferences held at Emory University as part of the Mellon Colloquium on the Self: the Conference on the Ecological Self in May 1989 and the Conference on the Interpersonal Self in May 1990 [citation:6][citation:17]. It is the fifth volume in the Emory Symposia in Cognition series [citation:1][citation:6]. Neisser edited the volume and wrote the introduction and opening chapter, 'The Self Perceived' [citation:9][citation:18]. The remaining chapters are contributed by fifteen scholars from psychology, philosophy, and related fields [citation:1][citation:13]. The volume was published by Cambridge University Press in 1993, with the paperback edition following later [citation:6][citation:14]. A review appeared in Contemporary Psychology in 1996 by D.A. Prentice and A.F. Smith [citation:3][citation:11].

The interpersonal self is established by social interaction with other people, specifically through species-specific signals of emotional rapport and communication [citation:1][citation:16]. Neisser argues that this self is also directly perceived, not inferred from behavior [citation:12]. When we engage in interactions with others, we perceive not only the other person but ourselves—we learn how others react to us, how our actions influence events, and whether our assumptions are correct [citation:12]. One contributor emphasizes that successful intersubjectivity depends not only on perceptual and motor systems but on 'some additional, specifically human mechanism that permits us to relate to members of our own species' [citation:12]. This interpersonal self, like the ecological self, appears in early infancy, grounding social cognition in direct perceptual information rather than conceptual inference.

The contributors extend the ecological and interpersonal self framework into developmental and clinical domains. Topics range from the perceptual and social development of infants to autism and blindness, from mechanisms of motor control to dance and non-verbal communication [citation:1][citation:13]. One chapter examines autism through the lens of affordances and the self, asking what children learn about themselves through interaction with others [citation:12]. Another chapter by Peter Hobson explores how physical impairment affects the way a self is registered, noting that blind children develop a self-concept later than sighted children . The volume thus demonstrates the framework's applicability beyond theoretical psychology, offering insights into atypical development and the embodied nature of self-knowledge [citation:13].