Cooley and Mead's theories as opposed to that of Freud.
Charles Horton Cooley, was a symbolic interactionist who taught at the University of Michigan, believed that we are who we are because of, our perceptions of how others view us, our perceptions of how others judge us, and our response to how we think we are being judged. Others are like a mirror. We look into that mirror and it reflects back to us who we are. In other words as we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we perceive in another's mind some thought of our appearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it.
George Herbert Mead, another symbolic interactionist who taught at the University of Chicago, added that play is critical to the development of the self. He believed that we learn to take on the roles of others in our play, and this is very important as it helps us put ourselves in other shoes, to try to understand how someone else feels and thinks and to anticipate how that person will act.
Sigmund Freud views are somewhat different. His beliefs were that our personality consists of three elements. The id, which every child is born with, it is the inborn drive that causes us to seek self-gratification. This is the pleasure seeking part of our subconscious. The opposite of this id, is what Freud called the superego, which represents the culture with us. It is the norms and values we have internalized from our social groups. The traffic cop so to speak is the Ego. This is the balancing force between the id and the superego. This helps give the pleasures our id seeks in life, in a way that pleases our norms and values. .
