True Self

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.^[1] Winnicott used “true self” to denote a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, having a real self with little to no contradiction.^[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.^[1]