This work problematizes what psychology usually takes for granted - the meaning of the psyche or "human nature". Peter Ashworth provides a coherent account of many of the major schools of thought in psychology and its related disciplines, including: sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, radical behaviourism, existentialism, discursive psychology and postmodernism. For each approach he considers the claims or assumptions being made about "human nature", especially regarding issues of consciousness, the self, the body, other people and the physical world. The work should be useful reading for all students of psychology.