Collectively we live in a culture that discards the past as irrelevant, and individually we are convinced that we create ourselves anew every day.
The European national self, as described by early twentieth century psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, was structured as a modern counterpart to the primitive and colonized other.
Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture, a sense that there is some purpose that has come with them into the world.