It has become a standard refrain of contemporary social theory that, as we begin the twenty-first century, our culture seems as incoherent and fractured as our mental life. Ideas exist in juxtaposition, contradicting each other at certain levels and complementing at others. The exploration of the interrelationship between these planes and layers of culture, as well as those of consciousness and selfhood, are what fuels art and literature and what occupies the psychiatrist's couch. At the heart of our culture is still the irresistible promise of Enlightenment rationality: that the world is there to be explained and bettered. The raw optimism of this original programme has been tempered over the years by certain provisos, exceptions and downright rejections, from romanticism and spirituality, to chaos, quantum and the uncertainty principle.

The strata of our psychological beliefs have built up, giving rise to a situation wherein our legal systems place emphasis on the individual's responsibility for actions as if they were all consciously taken, whilst more and more people turn to New Age practices to tap into unknowable forces they intuitively sense beyond our rational grasp. These currents entwine around each other, creating complex relationships. The turn to mysticism, for example, is unlike the submissive medieval attitude to religion. The idea that our place in the world is preordained and we live at the revocable benevolence of an almighty God has mutated through our enlightenment-tinged psyche to become another tool in the individual's kit for controlling their personal world.