The 'I' and the 'me' are terms central to the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead, one of the key influences on the development of the branch of sociology called symbolic interactionism.
[5] It is thus very close to the way in a man Freud's 'ego-censor, the conscience...arose from the critical influence of his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and the innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his environment—his fellow-men—and public opinion'.
"[8] People, he argues, are not automatons; Mead states that "the "I" reacts to the self which arises through the taking of the attitudes of others.
[13] In everyday life, however, 'a complete fusion of the "I" and the "me" may not be a good thing...it is a dynamic sort of balance between the "I" and the "me" that is required'.
[15] Mead recognised that it is normal for an individual to have 'all sorts of selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions', but also that it was possible for 'a tendency to break up the personality' to appear: 'Two separate "me's" and "I's", two different selves, result...the phenomenon of dissociation of personality'.
[17] Walt Whitman 'marks off the impulsive "I", the natural, existential aspect of the self, from critical sanction.