ABSTRACT
The Greeks believed they were the playthings of fate, Christians saw themselves as miserable sinners, Descartes thought that man was a thinker, liberals stressed self-determination, Romantics self-expression, while Freud invited you to go and lie upon the couch. The fundamental issue of identity has been endlessly posed by philosophers, poets, psychiatrists, and people at large. But if the question has stayed the same, the answers have changed over time. And so this book explores changing notions of selfhood from a historical perspective.
