Self-Literacy: Writing Out Personhood offers fifty perspectives on gaining an understanding of what 'personhood' may mean through various disciplines. Literature is a key medium through which selves are mapped as humans are written into being. Such literature is intimately tied to health such as within self-help literature, written accounts of illness, or of characters who are defined by their afflictions - physical, psychological, and moral. This book adopts an essay approach to aspects of selfhood, including disciplines of psychology (personality), sociology (social selves), anthropology (cultural selfhood), literary (the self as portrayed in literature), and history (notions of self through time). Each chapter can be read in isolation, and a comprehensive list of works on self is provided as a bibliography. This book will appeal to researchers and postgraduates engaged in the fields of Literature and Health Humanities, as well as psychology, sociology, and anthropology academics and students.

Alan Bleakley is Emeritus Professor of Medical Education and Medical Humanities at Plymouth Peninsula School of Medicine, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth, UK. He is a leading international figure in medical education and medical humanities and is widely published as both an academic and poet.