Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine a special subgroup of emotion: self-referential emo-
tions such as shame, pride and guilt. Self-referential emotions are usually conceptualized
as (i) essentially involving the subject herself and as (ii) having complex conditions such
as the capacity to represent others’ thoughts. I will show that rather than depending on
a fully fledged ‘theory of mind’ and an explicit language-based self-representation, (i)
pre-forms of self-referential emotions appear at early developmental stages already exhib-
iting their characteristic structure of the intentional object of the emotion being identical
with or intricately related to the subject experiencing the emotional state and that (ii) they
precede and substantially contribute to the development of more complex representations
and to the development of a self-concept, to social interaction and to ways of understand-
ing of other minds.