Concept
False self
A defensive organisation built on compliance, which forms when the mother repeatedly puts her own gesture in place of the infant's, so that the infant adapts to the environment instead of being adapted to. It protects and conceals the true self; in health it amounts to a polite social manner, but where it takes over, the person may function well and still feel unreal, empty or futile.
Read more- Introduced by
- Donald Winnicott
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- True self
introduced by
- Donald Winnicott 1960 Winnicott ranged false-self organisations from healthy social compliance to cases where the false self is taken for the whole person, and acknowledged that the idea had forerunners in earlier analytic writing.
opposes
- True self The two are defined as a pair: the false self forms out of compliance with an environment that fails the infant, and it shields and hides the true self.