Learning from the basics: Clinical implications of social, developmental, and cross-cultural study of the self

This article serves as an introduction to a series aimed at informing psychotherapists about the current state of theory and research on the self across different domains of basic psychological science (i.e., social, developmental, and cross-cultural). The authors highlight several gaps in integration that continue to exist both within the field of psychotherapy and across psychology as a whole and argue that such chasms serve to limit the applied utility of an abundance of scholarly work. The self is then presented as a potentially unifying construct that may begin to address such chasms. The overarching goal of this special series is to attempt a direct stimulation of science and practice, as well as cross-discipline integration, by presenting the clinical implications of the highly diverse study of the self.