This article proposes a novel account of English reflexives by focusing on one specific puzzle: how can reflexives trigger strict readings in ellipsis and focus constructions? The first goal is to provide a descriptively adequate statement of the distribution of strictly read reflexives by exploiting prosodic clues: only "strong" reflexives can give rise to strict readings, because "weak" reflexives behave as if they were part of self-predicates, which only trigger sloppy readings. The second goal is to propose an analysis of strict readings that also addresses two other crucial binding issues, namely how to derive Condition A and how to explain the link between reflexives and intensifiers. The proposed solution relies on the idea that self is the identity function used as a predicate nominal, yielding a two-place relation of identity, and that the antecedent of the reflexive—one of the arguments of self—moves to various positions, thus yielding intensifier or reflexive constructions from the same basic structure; antecedent movement derives the locality constraint imposed by Condition A and the availability of strict readings.