There were some interesting discussions on this thread a while back. I miss them! Narcissism – and the topics of ego, self, and identity – are topics that fascinate me even though I don’t have the NPD form of disordered personality.
Here’s a long quote from the Wikipedia article on true and false self that I could certainly identify with. For instance, Lowen’s description of a narcissist is a lot like me, only I mostly “acted in” my rebellion and anger on myself. Or at least so I think.
Also interesting is Masterson’s contention that all personality disorders involve a conflict between the “true” and “false” self.
Quote:
True self and false self are concepts introduced into psychoanalysis in 1960 by D. W. 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".
"False Self" by contrast Winnicott saw as a defensive facade — one which in extreme cases could leave its holders lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty, behind a mere appearance of being real.
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 motherer, 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 facade.
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.
The last half-century have seen Winnicott's ideas extended and applied in a variety of contexts, both in psychoanalysis and beyond.
Kohut: Heinz Kohut extended Winnicott's work in his investigation of narcissism, seeing narcissists as evolving a defensive armor around their damaged inner selves. He considered it less pathological to identify with the damaged remnants of the self, than to achieve coherence through identification with an external personality at the cost of one's own autonomous creativity.
Lowen: Alexander Lowen identified narcissists as having a true and a false, or superficial, self. The false self rests on the surface, as the self presented to the world. It stands in contrast to the true self, which resides behind the facade or image. This true self is the feeling self, but it is a self that must be hidden and denied. Since the superficial self represents submission and conformity, the inner or true self is rebellious and angry. This underlying rebellion and anger can never be fully suppressed since it is an expression of the life force in that person. But because of the denial, it cannot be expressed directly. Instead it shows up in the narcissist's acting out. And it can become a perverse force.
Masterson: James F. Masterson argued that all the personality disorders crucially involve the conflict between a person’s two “selves”: the false self, which the very young child constructs to please the mother, and the true self. The psychotherapy of personality disorders is an attempt to put people back in touch with their real selves.
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Thoughts or reactions, anybody?