Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed

by Will Storr

But with this very ordinary error, Freud managed to redefine our concept of original sin. With our ‘wishes, repugnant to morality . . . forced upon us by nature’, he theorized that much of humanity’s inner misery came, not from the Devil’s temptations, but from the monstrous urges that we repress. After studying neurology, Freud had the world-changing insight that much of human behaviour appears to be out of a person’s conscious control. This was the perfect message for its time. During the nineteenth century, people had become entranced by scientific discoveries that were unveiling hidden worlds. They were learning about genes, bacteria and evolution – unseen forces in the air and