Miller, David L.  George Herbert Mead: Self, Language, and the World.  Austin: Univ of Texas Press, 1973.

Abstract

This book is a presentation of Mead's philosophy as a system, showing how his social behavioristic theory of mind and the self is integrally related to his cosmology, his theory of the physical thing, the theory of relativity, and the objective reality of perspectives; it also shows how his principle of sociality applies to all of his works.  Mead's theory of the origin and function of language is addressed to such questions as the nature of mind, thinking and knowing, solipsism, private language, the psychical of subjective in contrast to the objective, the intersection of perspectives or the basis for universality and shared meanings, and communication at both the non-symbolic and symbolic levels.  In many instances Mead's theories of emergence, process, and creativity are compared and contrasted with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.  On the problems of language, mind and meanings, Mead is compared and contrasted with recent British analysts.  [Abstract from The Philosopher’s Index]

George Herbert Mead was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1863. He attended Oberlin College and Harvard University, and did graduate work in Leipzig and Berlin. He taught briefly at the University of Michigan and later, from 1894 until his death in 1931, at the University of Chicago. His first philosophic interest was in German idealism, but, through the influence of Wilhelm Wundt's physiological psychology and pragmatism's functional psychology, Mead developed a social-behavioristic account of the self, of mind, and thinking. This account is in sharp contrast to those offered by Descartes, Brentano, and Husserl, and it is more faithful to the theory of emergence, the scientific method, and the claim that individuals are the source of new ideas and new knowledge structures which, if valid, are accepted by the community. Recently, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have leaned heavily on Mead's social theory of mind and the self and its implications for epistemology and the sociology of knowledge. - (from book jacket)