True self and false self

True self also so-called as real self, authentic self, original self in addition to vulnerable self & false self also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self are psychological concepts, originally present into psychoanalysis in 1960 by Donald Winnicott. Winnicott used true self to describe a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and the feeling of being alive, having a real self. The false self, by contrast, Winnicott saw as a defensive façade, which in extreme cases could leave its holders lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty, slow a mere profile of being real.

The theory are often used in connection with narcissism.

Characteristics

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 whether responded to by the parents, become the basis for the continuing developing 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 solution for Winnicott could be the defining 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 manner 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 especially acute where the baby had to administer attunement for the mother/parents, rather than vice versa, building up a line 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.