Introduction

Abstract

In any conversation between two people, Oliver Wendell Holmes tells us, six people are involved: the two people as they actually are, the two as they see themselves and the two as they see one another. ‘Of these,’ adds Holmes, ‘the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants get angry when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.’¹