This book is devoted to the possibility of understanding the ascetic self in a time when most of us no longer find a place within ascetic traditions and in which asceticism is treated with suspicion. Ascetic discourse and practice have become alien in a world where religion is de-cosmologised and where the idea of deferring the gratification of desire for some other good is accepted only with hesitation. While there are what seem to be ascetical dimensions to all of our lives, and what appear to be ascetic practices take place by other names in the form of varied bodily regimes, from dietary disciplines for the purposes of health or beauty to physical training for athletic competitions, there is no ideology of repeated abstinence in secular life. The residues of ascetic practice in our culture have become mere technique without the accompaniment of tradition and an articulated idea of transcendence. And while all too many suffer deprivation driven by necessity, this cannot be classed as ascetic pursuit, for asceticism is voluntary. In the cultures of proliferation and excess that mark the modern Western world, in the decentred exuberance of urban life, there is little place for abstinence, self-contraction, containment, and the purification of desire that have been part of the ascetic life of thousands of men and women throughout the centuries.