A Contextual Behavioural Science approach to the self and perspective taking

•The self is a concept that is widespread in modern psychology.•The ‘self’ as an explanatory concept has arguably remained ill-defined in operational terms.•Contextual Behavioural Science offers a functional analytical account of the self.

The self is a concept that is widespread in modern psychology and has played either a central or supporting explanatory role in several major theoretical approaches to human behaviour including psychodynamics, humanism and positive psychology. Despite the popularity of ‘self’ as an explanatory concept within these approaches, however, it has arguably remained ill-defined in operational terms. Recently, however, a strand of behavioural psychology, namely Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS), has emerged that has begun to provide a functional analytic account of human language and cognition. From this perspective only humans have a sense of self. This is because only humans have language. Characterizing the self in functional terms is crucial to coherent understanding and effective intervention. The current paper examines a bottom up functional approach to understanding the self and perspective taking that can provide crucial knowledge on how to predict and influence self related problems.