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Essay on Charles Horton Cooley
Introduction
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) grew up at the University of Michigan, where his father taught law. There, he eventually became a presence in his own right, ascending after his studies to a professorship. From that position, he played a part in the early development of sociology in the United States. His books include Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), Social Organization (1909), and Social Process (1918). The following short selection presents his most famous concept, the looking-glass self, which still comes to mind when social theorists reconsider the social self.
harles Horton Cooley does indeed occupy an unusual position among his own generation in the perspective of post-World War II American sociologists. With this reissuance of Social Process, which has followed the earlier reprinting of Human Nature and the Social Order and Social Organization, all of his basic volumes are again available. No other eminent sociologist of his generation has been so recognized. Only Sumner Folkways has been reprinted in its entirety. 2 Recently, excerpts from his, Ward's, and Ross's writings have been published. 3 But not one of Giddings' or Small's books has been similarly treated. Compared to his colleagues, Cooley has been uniquely favored.
The Looking-Glass Self
In a very large and interesting class of cases the social reference takes the form of a somewhat definite imagination of how one's self--that is any idea he appropriates-appears in a particular mind, and the kind of self-feeling one has is determined by the attitude toward this attributed to that other mind. A social self of this sort might be called the reflected or looking-glass self:
"Each to each a looking-glass
Reflects the other that doth pass."
As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass, and are interested in them because they are ours....
