Case Study of a Woman With a Strong Sense of Self

Maggie K. was born in Bismark, Illinois, a small town just north of Danville and about 90 miles south of Chicago. Her father, David, was a fairly successful salesman; her mother, Alina, was a full-time housewife, focused on raising Maggie and her two younger siblings, Denise and Charlie. The events of Maggie's life recounted in this study are based on Maggie's own memories and the stories the family has told about itself. Maggie is especially qualified to think about her personal psychological development because she became a counsellor and sociologist, a career that encouraged her to look at her own life for support of the theories she was studying and for increased self-understanding.

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ue memories are from the end of this period, when she was about 3. Before this time, she is uncertain that what she remembers is more than a constructed memory, built on old photographs and family stories. In the early stages of becoming aware of herself as a person, Maggie was experiencing what Seymour Epstein (1973, May) calls the development of the self-concept, an important step which "organizes the data of experience, particularly experience involving social interaction, into predictable sequences of action and reaction . . . [and] facilitates attempts to fulfill needs while avoiding disapproval and anxiety" (p. 407). Maggie was learning to think of herself as a separate individual, capable of making sense of the world around her and manipulating it to meet her own needs. The next three years were spent in the phallic stage, during which the superego begins to coalesce. Freud argues that this is the period in which the child begins to establish a sexual role identity, attaching to the same-sex parent and, usually unconsciously, battling the other parent for control in the relationship. Charlie was born during this time, and Maggie remembers her father's delight that he now had a son. She also recalls being secretly hap
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2204
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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