Section Introduction: When are you most like your self?

What is the ‘self’? Is it a category of identity, a state of being, an object of contemplation? Is the self another name for soul, psyche, spirit, mind or body? And what gives us our ‘sense of self’? DNA? Ideology? God? These vexed questions continue to occupy the minds of scholars and artists in a variety of disciplines and creative practices, for the ‘self’ is a key term of distinction — one that confers us with a unique sense of identity.