Real self

True self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self) and false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are psychological concepts often used in connection with narcissism. True self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self) and false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are psychological concepts often used in connection with narcissism. The concepts were introduced into psychoanalysis in 1960 by Donald Winnicott. Winnicott used true self to describe a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience, and a feeling of being alive, having a real self. The false self, by contrast, Winnicott saw as a defensive façade – one which in extreme cases could leave its holders lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty, behind a mere appearance of being real. To maintain their self-esteem, and protect their vulnerable true selves, narcissists need to control others' behavior – particularly that of their children, seen as extensions of themselves. Winnicott saw the true self as rooted from early infancy in the experience of being alive, including blood pumping and lungs breathing – what Winnicott called simply being. Out of this, the baby creates the experience of a sense of reality, a sense that life is worth living. The baby's spontaneous, nonverbal gestures derive from that instinctual sense, and if responded to by the mother, become the basis for the continuing development of the true self. However, when what Winnicott was careful to describe as good enough parenting – i.e., not necessarily perfect! – was not in place, the infant's spontaneity was in danger of being encroached on by the need for compliance with the parents' wishes/expectations. The result for Winnicott could be the creation of what he called the false self, where 'Other people's expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one's being'. The danger he saw was that 'through this false self, the infant builds up a false set of relationships, and by means of introjections even attains a show of being real', while, in fact, merely concealing a barren emptiness behind an independent-seeming façade. The danger was particularly acute where the baby had to provide attunement for the mother/parents, rather than vice versa, building up a sort of dissociated recognition of the object on an impersonal, not personal and spontaneous basis. But while such a pathological false self stifled the spontaneous gestures of the true self in favour of a lifeless imitation, Winnicott nevertheless considered it of vital importance in preventing something worse: the annihilating experience of the exploitation of the hidden true self itself. There was much in psychoanalytic theory on which Winnicott could draw for his concept of the false self. Helene Deutsch had described the 'as if' personalities, with their pseudo relationships substituting for real ones. Winnicott's analyst, Joan Riviere, had explored the concept of the narcissist's masquerade – superficial assent concealing a subtle hidden struggle for control. Freud's own late theory of the ego as the product of identifications came close to viewing it only as a false self; while Winnicott's true/false distinction has also been compared to Michael Balint's 'basic fault' and to Ronald Fairbairn's notion of the 'compromised ego'. Erich Fromm, in his book The Fear of Freedom distinguished between original self and pseudo self – the inauthenticality of the latter being a way to escape the loneliness of freedom; while much earlier the existentialist like Kierkegaard had claimed that 'to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair' – the despair of choosing 'to be another than himself'. Karen Horney, in her 1950 book, Neurosis and Human Growth, based her idea of 'true self' and 'false self' through the view of self-improvement, interpreting it as real self and ideal self, with the real self being what one currently is and the ideal self being what one could become. (See also Karen Horney § Theory of the self).