The Glassy Continuum of Selfhood

I think we have a very strong intuitive sense of the unique quality of others, but it's just that we don't necessarily have that for ourselves. I've got this quotation from Ian McEwen who talks about the glassy continuum of selfhood. And Sartre puts it like this: character has no distinct existence except as an object of knowledge to other people. Consciousness doesn't know its own character.