The self a person believes himself to be. One's self image is a composite of many things and may bear little relation to any objective assessment of oneself or the assessment of others. The self-image begins very early in life and is probably, to a large extent, physical. This early body image can stay with a person for the rest of his life, so that as a normal-sized (or even tall) adult he may think of himself as small because, when his body image was being formed, he was small in relation to his peers. The judgments of other people are also important in the formation of the self image, but even though a person's social contacts, and therefore the judgments made of him, may change greatly in later life, he may still think of himself in terms of the earlier judgments.
Definition