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In his paper, Language and Psychoanalysis, Richardson (1987) describes the horrendous history of a patient named Norma Jean Baker and the creation of Marilyn Monroe. Norma Jean had started well before that time to construct an identity that would bring her a sense of worth and pride based on her fantasies of being rescued by an idealized father and later, on her immersion in the film world and its stars. Her inquiry, laughingly made to an autograph seeker, “How do you spell Marilyn Monroe?” was a clear statement of the split between her real and constructed selves.
The constructed self is not a false self in the Winnicott (1965) sense. The false self is basically a relational self and it is shaped in accord with the unconscious needs and projections of the primary caretakers. When the mother's intercessions are impingements—intrusions into or disruptions of the spontaneous experiencing of the child, its own self-directed flow of attention and movement becomes reactive instead. When this situation is chronic, rather than the occasional failure of the mother to be “good-enough,” identity becomes consolidated around the reactions vis-a-vis the impinging object. Identity may also become consolidated around parental projections of some rejected and projected aspects of themselves. The false self-identity, which feels real, serves two functions. It both enables and maintains a connection to the parent, and protects the hidden true self from them. It is because of the its critical function of object connecting that it is so difficult to give up in treatment.