More from our pal, Harry Berger...

"Consider the difference between these two statements: 'Rembrandt
fashioned himself'; 'Rembrandt fashioned his self.' In the first, the
reflexive shifter circles back and disappears into the subject; in the
second, the noun phrase that is the object of the verb splits off from
the subject and moves forward in search of the reification promised by
the verb. The first illustrates the diathetical relation expressed in
Greek by middle-voice constructions; it implies no claims about the
separate existence of an object called 'the self.' But in the second,
reification doubles our trouble: two referents instead of one have to
be considered, not to mention the relation between them. An ontic
rather than reflexive signifier, '[the] self' denotes an independent
entity and thus carries theoretical commitments that are lacking - or
at most implicit - in the first locution."

-Harry Berger in Fictions of the pose: Rembrandt against the Italian Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000