The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent-and Reinvent-Our Identities

A New York Times–bestselling author reveals how the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, are critical to our lives

We all know we tell stories about ourselves. But as psychiatrist and neuroscientist Gregory Berns argues in The Self Delusion, we don’t just tell stories; we are the stories. Our self-identities are fleeting phenomena, continually reborn as our conscious minds receive, filter, or act on incoming information from the world and our memories.

Drawing on new research in neur...