The True and the False Self

one of the most surprising but powerful
explanations for why we may as adults be
in trouble mentally is that we were in
our earliest years denied the
opportunity to be fully ourselves that
is we were not allowed to be willful and
difficult we could not be as demanding
aggressive intolerant and unrestrictedly
selfish as we need it to be because our
caregivers were preoccupied or fragile
we had to be preternaturally attuned to
their demands sensing that we had to
comply in order to be loved and
tolerated we had to be false before we
had the chance to feel properly alive
and as a result many years later without
quite understanding the process we risk
feeling unanchored inwardly dead and
somehow not entirely present this
psychological theory of the true and the
false self is the work of one of the
20th century’s greatest thinkers the
English psychoanalyst and child
psychiatrist Donald Winnicott in a
series of papers written in the 1960s
and based on close observations of his
adult and infant patients Winnicott
advanced the view that healthy
development invariably requires us to
experience the immense life-sustaining
luxury of a period when we don’t have to
bother with the feelings and opinions of
those who are tasked with looking after
us we can be holy and without guilt our
true selves because those around us have
for a time adapted themselves entirely
to our needs and desires
however inconvenient and arduous these
might be the true self of the infant in
winnicott’s formulation is by nature a
social and a moral it isn’t interested
in the feelings of others
it isn’t socialized it screams when it
needs to even if it’s the middle of the
night or on a crowded train
it may be aggressive biting and in the
eyes of a stickler for manners or a
lover of high
Jeane shocking and a bit disgusting it
wants to express itself where and how it
wants it can be sweet of course but on
its own terms not in order to charm or
bargain for love if a person is to have
any sense of feeling real as an adult
then it has to have enjoyed the immense
emotional privilege of being able to be
true in this way to disturb people when
it wants to kick when it’s angry to
scream when it’s tired to bite when it’s
feeling aggressive the true self of the
child must be granted to the imaginative
opportunity to destroy the parent when
it’s in a rage and then witness the
parent surviving and enduring which
lends the child a vital and immensely
reassuring sense that it’s not in fact
omnipotent and that the world won’t
collapse simply because it sometimes
wishes or fears it could when things go
well gradually and willingly
the child develops a full self a
capacity to behave according to the
demands of external reality this is what
enables a child to submit to the rigors
of school and as it develops into an
adult of working life as well when we
have been given the chance to be our
true selves we don’t at every occasion
need to rebel and insist on our needs we
can follow the rules because we have for
a time being able to ignore them
entirely in other words
Winnicott was not a thorough enemy of a
full self he understood its role well
enough
he simply insisted that it belonged to
health only when it had been preceded by
a thorough earlier experience of an
unfortunately many of us have not
enjoyed such an ideal start perhaps
mother was depressed or father was often
in a rage maybe there was an older or
younger sibling who was in a crisis and
required all the attention the result is
that we will have learned to comply far
too early we will have become obedient
at the expense of our ability to feel
authentically ourselves in relationships
we may now be polite and geared to the
needs of our partners but not for that
matter able properly to love at work we
may be dutiful but uncreated and
unoriginal in such circumstances and
this is its genius psychotherapy offers
us a second chance in the hands of a
good therapist we are allowed to regress
before the time when we started to be
false back to the moment when we so
desperately needed to be true in the
therapists office safely contained by
their maturity and care we can learn
once more to be real we can be
intemperate difficult unconcerned with
anyone but ourselves
selfish unimpressive aggressive and
shocking and the therapist will take it
and thereby help us to experience a new
sense of aliveness which should have
been there from the start the demand to
be false which never goes away becomes
more bearable because we are regularly
being allowed in the privacy of the
therapists room once a week or so to be
true Winnicott was famously calm and
generous towards his patients when they
were attempting to refined their true
selves in this way one of them smashed a
favorite vars of his another stole his
money
a third shouted insults at him session
after session but Winnicott was
unruffled knowing that this was part of
a journey back towards health away from
the deadly fakeness afflicting these
patients in the rest of their lives we
can be grateful to Winnicott for
reminding us that contentment and a
feeling of reality have to pass through
stages of almost limitless delinquents
selfish
there is simply no other way we have to
be true before we can be productively a
bit fake and if we have never been
allowed then our sickness and depression
is there to remind us that we need to
take a step back and therapy is there to
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