Secluded Lives: The Shelter of False Selves in Sociocultural Contexts

It is suggested in general terms that Winnicott's idea of a false self (1960), developed in order to protect the true self, can be extrapolated with regard to cultural—religious-ethnic-racial persecution, and both individual and communal defensive maneuvers. Those defensive maneuvers are applied in a sophisticated manner. Their goal of withstanding the persecutor y threat is achieved by pseudosiding with the enemy, so to speak. Winnicott's false self fulfills its function of safeguarding the true self via compliance with environmental demands, and especially by way of imitation. Likewise, while submissive and adaptive on the outside, subjects of persecution secretly continue their true lives underground. It is argued that these false self devices can be detected in a diversity of phenomena: cases of direct external threat, such as that experienced by the Marrano Jews at the time of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal; cases of less direct repression such as those experienced by colonized subjects under the colonizer's rule; and the rather subtle implications of sociocultural and linguistic adaptation of immigrants to their new country's culture and language. In this paper, examples of all of these varieties are demonstrated via quotes from diverse literary sources.