In this clear and reasoned discussion of self-knowledge and the self, the author asks whether it is really possible to know ourselves as we really are.

He illuminates issues about the nature of self-identity which are of fundamental importance in moral psychology, epistemology and literary criticism.

Jopling focuses on the accounts of Stuart Hampshire, Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Rorty, and dialogical philosophical psychology and illustrates his argument with examples from literature, drama and psychology.