"Selfness" And "Selflessness"

"Selfness" refers to the concept and knowledge of oneself. It is an old-but-always- fresh topic in psychology, which has maintained through philosophical psychology to contemporamainstream psychology. This is not only true of psychology, but also of Buddhism research. As an approach to enlightenment, Buddhism research has done a lot of work on "selfness", and formulated a sound and perfect system, glittering with wisdom. On her tedious and long journey of self exploration, western psychology surprisingly found there is rich and valuable insights on selfness in Buddhism, which agree with western self-view unexpectedly and gradually.The present thesis tries to compare western psychology and Buddhism on the topic of selfness, and propel the dialogue and communication between them with the purpose of helping people do more self exploration and providing practical instructions for life and practice.This paper falls into four branches: in the first part, the genesis of psychology is reviewed, which is the early philosophical understandings of selfness, and the overall constructs of Buddhist self-view and criticism of egocentrism; in the second part, self understanding of conventional psychology and the "false self view of Buddhism are discussed; in the third part, self understanding of postmodern psychology schools and the "selflessness view" of Buddhism are compared; and in the last part, the "true self of Buddhism is explored. With the discussions hereinbefore, we can help those moderns who are suffering from egocentrism out and lead a creative and meaningful life.