Introduction: Ego trouble? "Es ist unmöglich wahrer über sich selbst zu schreiben, als man ist" (Ludwig Wittgenstein 1) 'Ego trouble' may seem slightly inappropriate as a title for a volume on early medieval authors. 2 Some may be reminded of psychoanalytical debates or of Judith Butler's feminist classic 'gender trouble', written in the heydays of postmodernism. 3 There were, however, two reasons for chosing it. One is that the debate on medieval 'individualism' has been trapped within, or between, linear master narratives for too long. When was the modern individual 'born', in the 12 th and 13 th , in the 15 th or only in the 18 th century? 4 Did medieval people have to live without a self? To pose the problem in terms of 'the origins of the individual/the self' would already introduce a teleological concept bound to come in the way of a close reading of the evidence. The present title is more open, and spells out that we are not in a position to apply well-defined categories to a clear set of historical sources. We are in methodological trouble indeed. The second reason for choosing the title was that looking for trouble in our evidence is in fact an important and often-ignored methodological tool for the analysis of past individuals, groups and societies. That may be more productive than trying to fit the evidence neatly in simple categories, such as individual/collective, rational/irrational, modern/archaic, or autonomous/ heteronomous. This is not to say that such terms are totally inadequate. They allow, up to a certain point, to establish differences and detect developments. But as research moves on, binary opposites and the respective master narratives tend to become methodological obstacles. Intellectuals of our day may well have a capacity for self-reflection superior to the best medieval minds; but at the present stage, that is not a very interesting conclusion any more, and it easily leads to the simplifying view that the Middle Ages were an archaic society