Hayes, 1995

My purpose in this paper is to distinguish between three senses of the concept of "self."
This concept is not a technical one within a behavioral perspective, but the domain of events it refers to is a rich and important one, both clinically and experientially. In discussing this concept, it is not my goal to elevate "self" to technical status, but rather to explore some of the key dimensions of the phenomena that are involved.

I am going to delimit my discussion to a particular area that involves the issue of the self - - the “selves” that humans know about directly. That is, I am speaking of known selves, or perhaps knowing selves -- not self merely as an idea or an object. Some concepts in psychology are meant to refer to an on-going psychological event, while others are best viewed as observer concepts that may be useful in analysis, but are highly abstracted from the actual event itself. Some senses of the word self (e.g., self as the totality of ones experience, self as a biological organism, self as integrated repertoires of behavior) are purely observer concepts. When we are dealing with selves that are known about, we are dealing with both an event and an observation of an event simultaneously. When a self is known, the individual is functioning both as a doer and as an observer of the doing. It is this smaller area of the concept of self that I want to speak about.

Within this domain there are three senses of self that can be distinguished: self as the context for knowing, self as the process of knowing, and self as the content of knowing. These three levels emerge as a natural by-product of verbal behavior itself. ...