I will trace the history of western conceptions of soul and self from the ancient Greeks to the present. The story line that I will present is based mainly on material covered in two books by Ray Martin and myself: The Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century (Routledge, 2000) and The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity (Columbia University Press, 2006). The basic idea is that from Plato through the church fathers to Descartes there was a rise in the notion of an immaterial, immortal self that is a centre of consciousness and distinct from the material body. Since the eighteenth century, this notion of a separate encapsulated conscious self has increasingly come under attack: first, through empirical approaches to consciousness and the material brain; then through social and developmental approaches to the acquisition of self-concepts.