On Cooling the Mark Out

What is the self? How are selves socially produced and managed?
This article by Goffman applies the idea of self to a criminal case. He looks at white-collar crime and the 'con man' at first. He explains the difference between these two 'selves' (assuming it could be one person, although it could probably be more than one person) as a "con man [being] someone who accepts a social role in the underworld community", where as a "white collar criminal has no colleagues... may have associates with whom he plans his crime". 
Goffman also explains what a "mark" is, which is someone who has been marked for another person to illegally exploit for their money. From this he explains his understanding of how a 'con man' works to gain the trust of this 'mark' and then once the trust is built, abuse it so they can take all the money. Goffman notes that the "mark" would most likely be angry with the fact they were stupid enough to get robbed and therefore must learn the "philosophy of taking a loss". Goffman states that the "capacity for high finance comes near to being a sign of masculinity and a test of fulfilling the male role", thus not fulfilling this role supposedly makes the mark feel like they are inadequate to be a 'man'. 
This hurt ego can lead to what Goffman classifies a "social sin of defining oneself in terms of a status while lacking the qualifications which an incumbent of that status is supposed to posses". 
 The above is just a very brief summary of what Goffman talks about in the article I will link below.
In my tutorial our class tried to figure out what is the criteria for being a self? We had to consider if language defined someone having a self in relation to a baby who is yet to talk, or an animal which cannot talk. Are we ventriloquizing them to the point that we are projecting our own idea of the self on to them? 
The many different selves we are assumed to have supposedly change from the context we are in and therefore those who cannot adequately adapt to a self that is appropriate for their surroundings is considered socially inept. I would seriously recommend watching the movie Nell. It looks at the different kinds of self society has, and then challenges it by questioning what a 'self' is and who gets to define if it is normal. 


Nell:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110638/

"On cooling the mark out"
http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/Goffman--Cooling.htm.