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The author states that the aim of this paper is to approach Winnicott's ideas about the true self—both from the semiotic tradition in philosophy and from the independent British tradition in psychoanalysis—so that the metaphoric and evocative way in which they were originally described can be made more precise. The two traditions are brought together and an integration is attempted. The major theses are 1) that the true self is a symbolic entity, and 2) that there are three stages in the development of symbolic dialogue: the intercorporeal, the intersubjective, and the intrasubjective. An approach to the psychotherapeutic recovery of the true self is also suggested. After trying to describe the true and false selves through clinical vignettes, the author abstracts six qualities that describe the true self: 1) spontaneity, 2) bodily movement, 3) social evocativeness, 4) aggression, 5) developmental growth, and 6) interiority. An essential feature of the qualities, upon which Winnicott elaborates, is their paradoxical nature: inner and outer, individual and social, created and found, tangible and symbolic. Auerbach uses the concept of organic gesture to understand the paradoxical aspect of the true self as a property of formative meaning—the true self is a symbolic entity involved in symbolic dialogue.