ABSTRACT
It is widely agreed that a pleasant way to spend a damp and chilly Saturday afternoon in the great city of Washington is to browse the time away in Kramer’s Bookstore close to Dupont Circle. Drifting from genre to genre one is struck by the number of books with ‘self’ in the title or subtitle. In the section where one finds the books that booksellers classify as ‘psychology’ there are lots. For example among the popular works are Adams’ Journal of the Self (1990), Anthony’s Total SelfConfidence (1993) and Cleghorn’s The Secrets of Self-Esteem (1996). In a more academic vein we find Baumeister’s Self-esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard (1984), Field’s Self-Esteem for Women (1997) and Lee’s Psychological Theories of the Self (1979). Books with ‘consciousness’ in the title or subtitle are almost as common, they map onto genres in a slightly different way. We can be sure in these too the ‘self’ will figure prominently. Yet neither selfhood nor consciousness is a clear, univocal or straightforward notion. What is it to be a human being is what is really at issue of course, and that is the perennial question!
