The true self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self) and the false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are a psychological dualism conceptualized by English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott.
[2] "False self", by contrast, denotes a sense of self created as a defensive facade,[1] which in extreme cases can leave an individual lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty behind an inconsistent and incompetent appearance of being real, such as in narcissism.
After birth, the baby's spontaneous, nonverbal gestures derive from that instinctual sense,[1] and if responded to kindly and with affirmation by the parents, become the basis for the continuing development of the true self.
[5] The result could be the creation of what Winnicott 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".
[8] The danger was particularly acute when 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.
[10] Winnicott's analyst, Joan Riviere, had also explored the concept of the narcissist's masquerade, which is essentially a superficial assent concealing a subtle hidden struggle for control.
[24] Symington stressed however the intentional element in the individual's abandoning the autonomous self in favour of a false self or narcissistic mask – something he considered Winnicott to have overlooked.
[25] As part of what has been described as a personal mission to raise the profile of the condition, [26] psychology professor (and self-confessed narcissist) Sam Vaknin has highlighted the role of the false self in narcissism.
[35] Breaking up a monolithic but false body-sense in the process of therapy could allow for the emergence of a range of authentic (even if often painful) body feelings in the patient.
[43] The philosopher Michel Foucault took issue more broadly with the concept of a true self on the anti-essentialist grounds that the self was a construct – something one had to evolve through a process of subjectification, an aesthetics of self-formation, not something simply waiting to be uncovered:[44] "we have to create ourselves as a work of art".