There is no evidence of its existence. Yet the idea of the true self – who you really are deep down – is everywhere in our popular culture: in music, literature, films, and the entire self-help industry. But even if our journeys of self-discovery set out to find something that doesn’t exist, and even if there’s no such thing as “becoming who we really are”, believing we have a true self helps us make sense of the world, find our lives more meaningful, and act more morally, argue Rebecca Schlegel and Joshua Hicks.
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