Abstract

After summarizing Kathleen Wallace’s cumulative network model of the self, this paper explores Wallace’s account of the whole self’s capacity for self‐reflection in some detail. Supposing that constituents of the self are capable of interpreting and communicating with one another, how is it possible for the whole self to interpret and communicate with itself and to act on the basis of its self‐understandings? The paper suggests that Wallace needs an account of the self’s ability to synthesize the information that interpretative communication furnishes and manage it to reach all‐things‐considered judgments and decide what to do. The paper sketches such an account and concludes by considering some implications for selfhood of different types of traumatic experience.