Definition of "self" []

• The total, essential, or particular being of a person; the individual: "An actor's instrument is the self” ( Joan Juliet Buck). (noun)
• The essential qualities distinguishing one person from another; individuality: "He would walk a little first along the southern walls, shed his European self, fully enter this world” ( Howard Kaplan). (noun)
• One's consciousness of one's own being or identity; the ego: "For some of us, the self's natural doubts are given in mesmerizing amplification by way of critics' negative assessments of our writing” ( Joyce Carol Oates). (noun)
• One's own interests, welfare, or advantage: thinking of self alone. (noun)
• Immunology That which the immune system identifies as belonging to the body: tissues no longer recognized as self. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If the temporary coalition of conscious states that is winning at the moment is what I am, is the self, each temporal chunk of ˜self™ is likely to be found in different parts of the brain from other such chunks and there will be many NCCs of unified consciousness in many different places."
• "The impossibility of defining objects in terms of relativity to a finite self, conducts dialectically to the conception of the _absolute self_."
• "The means for this suppression of self _depends entirely on the development of the consciousness of self_."