The Brain Revolution requires a major conceptual shift about the self, from viewing our selves as things to viewing them as complex processes. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux eloquently writes:
In my view, the self is the totality of what an organism is physically, biologically, psychologically, socially, and culturally. Though it is a unit, it is not unitary. It includes things that we know and things that we do not know, things that others know about us that we do not realize. It includes features that we express and hide, and some that we simply don't call upon. It includes what we would like to be as well as what we hope to never become.