The Masochistic Defence of the 'Double Mask': Its Relationship to Imposture

The childhood history of many dependent–masochistic patients reveals that the child perceives the parent of the same sex as being deficient in some important adult attributes and is frightened by the real possibility that he could easily excel over this parent, who is regarded as capable of vengeful retaliatory punishment. This persistent oedipal fear inhibits striving towards full use of adult potential, and fosters dependency and limited achievement. In adulthood, to avoid the anxiety that would be generated by genuine adult achievement, the dependent–masochistic individual appears to behave like a child who must master adult competence without growing up, as if he were wearing the 'mask' of childhood and then superimposing on it the 'mask' of adulthood. A convenient term for this phenomenon is the 'double mask defence'. Such a patient wishes to give the impression of adult competence, with the secret feeling that he is falsely convincing others of his adequacy as an adult—which is how the inadequate parent seems to function. He feels the need for a parental overseer, whom he seeks to please in order to be liked for his performance rather than to gain a sense of mastery and self-sufficiency. This is readily observable in the passive–compliant–helpless transferential stance taken by such patients in psychoanalytic treatment.

The psychopathology and childhood history of the impostor bear a strong resemblance to the masochist's 'double mask defence': the impostor is capable of achievement only when he knows secretly that he is deceiving everyone; effective functioning without imposture generates intense anxiety, and even eminent success as an impostor often causes such intense anxiety as to lead to flight or self-exposure. However, the impostor's character disturbance is much more severe than that of the 'double mask' masochist, and the childhood traumata more extreme.