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The False Self has been conceptualized here as a defensive organization developed unconsciously as infants are compelled to abandon their own wishes and needs to accommodate chronic or acute failures of mothering, which comes to serve multiple functions for the individual. Illustrated through the analysis of a forty-four-year-old woman is a highly individualized False Self, serving to (1) protect her True Self; (2) maintain a connection with mother; (3) protect mother from the infant's destructiveness; (4) ward off the child's oedipal issues; and (5) create a means by which she could disidentify from mother.
Four of the False-Self functions explored here have been previously referenced in the literature (Winnicott, 1960a; Cassimatis, 1984; Stern, 1985; Glasser, 1992). In general, the first two of these False-Self functions emerged during the first half of the analysis, and reflect the more traditional notion of the False Self, the key features of which are compliance and accommodation. The latter three functions of the False Self emerged during the second half of the analysis, as I attempted to identify and understand the more intractable elements of this patient's False-Self organization.