The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 29 of 254
Belief in the enduring self as magical thinking
We may go through major transformations, not just brain injuries, but what psychologists call ‘emotional insult’, such as the break-up of relationships or a bereavement. ‘Are we the same people when we come through them? In some sense yes, in some sense no, but it seems we have no choice but to believe that we are.’ Belief in the enduring self is therefore, Broks believes, a kind of magical thinking. But that is not to disparage it: the magic has real power, ‘it’s what we’re built on’.