Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed

by Will Storr

other people, and seeing how they treat us. That’s how we build our model of who we are. This idea is sometimes referred to as ‘The Looking-Glass Self’. In his book The Self Illusion, Bruce cites its creator, the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, who wrote, ‘I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am.’ The illusion is thought to take form at around the age of two. ‘That’s when you start to have autobiographical memories,’ he told me. ‘Then, in most cases, at around two to three years of age, children start interacting with other children, competing with them and joining groups. To participate usefully in a social arrangement, you have to have a sense of who you are, you have to have a sense of identity, and that sense of identity is a self. That must be constructed by the contextual information – Who am I? Which groups do I belong to? – as well as the biological ones – Am I a boy or a girl? Am I black