The concept of false self in D. W. Winnicott´s theory of personal maturation

Author(s)

Gabriela Bruno Galvan

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD)
• Defense date: 2013-04-18

Examining board members

Maria Lucia Toledo Moraes Amiralian; Elsa Oliveira Dias; Audrey Setton Lopes de Souza; Rosa Maria Tosta; Tania Maria Jose Aiello Vaisberg

• Advisor: Maria Lucia Toledo Moraes Amiralian

Abstract

The objective of this study is to systematize and analyze the concept of false self in D. W. Winnicotts theory of personal maturation and show that this concept contributes for the comprehension of health and psychic illness on the diverse steps of development. The pathological false self was presented as a defensive organization that is originated by a pattern of flaws in the facilitating environment during the beginning of the contact with the shared reality a fundamental task that imposes itself on the baby at the start of life and is the root of the capacity to relate healthily with the external world throughout existence. It was evaluated that the false self walks toward the pathology, as it implicates a personality scission and the loss of various levels of spontaneity and the personal sense of living, the base of the mental health for Winnicott. The newborn, immature and extremely dependent of maternal care, needs the mother to introduce him to the world accordingly to his need, complementing his spontaneous gesture. The mother fails when introducing the world to the baby not following his rhythm, not considering his gesture, imposing her own pattern that does not consider the newborns person. That configures an invasion, a discontinuity of existing, the loss of spontaneity and the loss of the capacity to create the world based on the personal and true self. It was considered that the baby, in order to preserve the true self and protect it from being definitely violated or extinguished, operates the scission between the true self the spontaneity source and the false self, that adapts itself and relates to the requirements of the external world as they are presented. The baby submits to the maternal pattern and becomes reactive. The false self can be described as a reactivity pattern as opposed to spontaneity, and the articulation of these two manners of relating with the external reality involve diverse degrees of psychic health or illness. From an analysis of the degrees of scission between the true and the false self, it is concluded that, in this perspective, the mental health cannot be evaluated considering a persons adequacy to the external reality; and that it is the combinatorial of factors, as the earliness of the externalitys outbreak prior to the babys readiness, the type of maternal flaw that establishes itself as pattern and the degree of contact with the personal impulse loss, that will compose the diverse disorders related to the false self (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/09657-7 - The concept of true and false self at the D. W. Winnicott's Theory of Personal Maturing: Contributions to a new comprehension of health and illness along the human development.
• Grantee: Gabriela Bruno Galván
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate