The Necessary Fiction of Selfhood

Hobbes, Freud, and Callard on Adulthood

Mystics are fond of asserting that all distinctions are illusory. Not only is there no self, but there is no boundary between self and other. Selfhood is a fiction produced by the ego. But the ego is just a wobbly jockey trying to keep hold of the reigns atop the unruly elephant of everythingness.

Edge cases bear the mystic out: children, the mad, the ne…