How do you define and perceive the "Self" and one's own personality?

Question

A question asked in my Sociology class

Answer 1

That is a really hard question, but i think that i am made up of my thoughts and experiences (and also what i thought of those experiences, lol) The Mind/Body question is one that hasn't really been answered yet, but it was William James (1842-1910), that said the "Conscious evolved as a function, an emphasis on experience of the self as a stream of consciousness rather than seperate perceptions" and David Hume (1711-1776) thought that "the self exists as a string of ideas"  But i like this the most- "Cogito ergo sum" (i think, therefore i am)

Answer 2

Most people define themseleves through the actions and reactions  of the past. They live in perpetual anguish trying to make relaity fit what they percieve it to be from the experience of their own history.

Peronality it the outward projection of what they expect people to see them as. A sort of residual self image created by the information gathered in accumeulated social interation giving the least obstuctive path to social acceptance and interatcion.