Critical review of previous techniques for the measurement of an individual's self-concept (SC) is a necessary prelude to the development of more adequate methodologies. This paper focuses on recent methodological innovations in the study of the self, namely, those derived from cognitive social psychology. A view of the self as a cognitive structure residing within a person's semantic memory allows the introduction of techniques originally used in experimental cognitive psychology to the study of the self. Multivariate techniques, including cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, offer potential for the study of the structure and content of an individual's SC. Of interest is the application of such experimental and statistical methodologies to the temporal variation in an individual's view of self. Reliable differences in the structure and content of the "now" self, the "possible" self, and the "ideal" self may be discerned by application of these techniques. Such techniques can also be applied to the evaluation of interventions designed to alter or restructure SC. They also hold promise for innovations in the provision of feedback to clients in the course of counseling and psychotherapy. The influence of individual difference variables such as self-monitoring or self-consciousness are examined to determine the conditions under which any measurement technology can be expected to yield interpretable results. One of the most perplexing problems encountered with any attempt at a structural representation of SC involves the selection of a stimulus set that can adequately represent its complexity. Adjectives found in the 80 scales listed by R. R. McCrae and P. T. Costa (1985) constitute an excellent summary of trait adjectives that could be used in a multidimensional scaling investigation of SC. (Author/RLC)