psychologist asks people to explain the causes of their own thoughts and behaviour anymore unless they’re interested in storytelling’. It’s why a neuroscientist colleague of Professor Leonard Mlodinow said that years of psychotherapy had allowed him to construct a helpful story about his feelings, motivations and behaviour, ‘but is it true? Probably not. The real truth lies in structures like my thalamus and hypothalamus, and my amygdala, and I have no conscious access to those no matter how much I introspect.’