Have you ever considered that there is a real self and an ideal self?

In this lesson, you will discover

the difference between the two, and the effect of two selves at odds. The lesson also offers a short
quiz to help you measure your level of understanding.

Real vs. Ideal Self

In psychology, the real self and the ideal self are terms used to describe personality domains. The
real self is who we actually are. It is how we think, how we feel, look, and act. The real self can be
seen by others, but because we have no way of truly knowing how others view us, the real self is
our self-image.
The ideal self, on the other hand, is how we want to be. It is an idealized image that we have
developed over time, based on what we have learned and experienced. The ideal self could include
components of what our parents have taught us, what we admire in others, what our society
promotes, and what we think is in our best interest.
Characteristically for Husserlian phenomenology, whatever we can legitimately say about the self is
closely paralleled by an account of the data and workings of self-awareness. On the one hand,
Husserl speaks about the self (“the monad”) as the experienced totality of one’s life. Within it, we can
abstractively distinguish constitutive levels, all the way down to the pre-egological flow of time-
consciousness, quite unlike our ordinary experiences of ourselves. On the other hand, Husserl’s
later account of intentional acts involves the idea of an ego-pole, an aspect of intentional
experiences, conceived as the opposite of an object-pole. In our intentional lives, the ego-pole is the
source and center of performance and activity, including the action of predication. One way in which
we can be aware of our selves is by regarding them reflectively, as in phenomenological reflection.
However, for Husserl, the primary self-awareness is pre-reflective. In Husserl-scholarship, this pre-
reflective self-awareness has been identified with the absolute flow of time-consciousness.