2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Children who experience their selves as unworthy of love often grow up into adults with low self-esteem. This low self-esteem is highly correlated with family relationships. Many studies show that long-term family relationships have a positive effect on self-esteem, while children with inadequate family support show problems of psychological well-being, social retardation and impaired physical functioning.
Donald Winnicott wrote a lot in his works about the development of the imaginary self within the mother-child relationship. Such a self gets the opportunity to develop at the stages of primary object relations, when the child is minimally integrated, since the synthesis of numerous sensory-motor elements is based on the fact that the mother is holding the child, often physically and all the time - metaphorically. The child in this non-integrated stage acts spontaneously, and the source of this spontaneity is the true self. The mother reacts to these spontaneous actions and manifestations of the child in a "good enough" or "not good enough" response. A sufficiently good response to the child's spontaneity enables the true self to find life. An insufficiently good answer is incapable of satisfying and frustrating the child's spontaneity. By giving an insufficiently good answer, the mother replaces the spontaneous expression of the child's true self with her own beliefs, desires and actions, giving rise to excessive compliance in the child and contributing to the appearance of an imaginary self.
Congruence is the term we use to denote the coherence of our experience and our awareness … it can be used in a broader sense, denoting the coherence of experience, awareness and communication about it to others … the simplest illustration of congruence is the infant. If he feels hunger on a physiological and visceral level, then, probably, his awareness is consistent with this sensation and what he communicates is also consistent with his inner experience. He experiences hunger and discomfort, and this is observed at all levels. At this moment, he is, as it were, united with the feeling of hunger and makes one whole with it. On the other hand, if he is full and satisfied, it is also a whole feeling: what happens at the visceral level is consistent with what is happening at the level of consciousness and at the level of communication. He remains whole, one and the same being, regardless of whether we consider his experience at the visceral level, the level of consciousness or the level of communication. Perhaps one of the reasons most people are so responsive to young children is that they are completely sincere, whole, or congruent. If an infant is showing love, anger, contempt, or fear, it never occurs to us to question whether he or she is experiencing these very feelings at all levels. He is clearly showing fear, or love, or whatever.
To illustrate incongruence, we need to refer to someone who has passed the stage of childhood. Take as an example a person who experiences anger while engaging in a group discussion. His face is flushed, anger is heard in his tone, he is wagging his finger at his opponent. Nevertheless, when his friend says: "Okay, you shouldn't be so angry about this," he replies with sincere surprise: "And I'm not angry! It doesn't bother me at all! I just reasoned logically." Hearing this, the rest of the group begins to laugh.
Carl Rogers
If a child often finds himself in a situation of being unable to act spontaneously from his real self, he learns that this real self is unacceptable and even dangerous and therefore must be hidden. From that moment on, the child's true desires, needs and personality collapse and hide in a false self.
The false self is always ready to meet the needs, expectations and requirements of the mother, which becomes a priority. If this suppression of the authentic self continues for a long time, the child begins to lose the ability to feel, know and act from his inner nature. The script for such a child is often predetermined. He becomes an adult who has no idea about his own needs and desires, let alone how to fulfill them.
Classification of the False Self (according to D. Winnicott)
Extreme option
The False I pretends to be the True, and from the outside it is this I that is usually perceived as a real person. In this extreme position, the True Self remains completely hidden.
Less extreme position
The false self protects the true self. At the same time, the True Self is recognized as potentially existing, and a hidden life is allowed to it. This is the purest example of a clinical illness with a positive goal of striving to maintain individuality in the face of abnormal surroundings.
Another step closer to health
The False Self considers its main concern to find conditions that will give the True Self the opportunity to withdraw into itself. In the event that such conditions cannot be found, it must erect a new defense against the exploitation of the True Self; if doubts prevail, then the clinical result is suicide.
Even further towards health
The false self is built on identifications.
Healthy condition
The false self is represented by a well-established structure of "politically correct" social behavior, which presupposes in us the ability in a public place not to demonstrate our feelings with excessive openness. In many ways, it also serves our readiness to give up the feeling of our own omnipotence and the primary process in general, and at the same time - success in winning an appropriate place in society, which can never be achieved or supported by the efforts of only one True Self.
It is these adults who often find themselves in the therapist's office in search of their true desires, their own path, their authentic self. Often at the first stages of therapy, they are disappointed, as they expect direct instructions, recommendations and a plan from the therapist on how to proceed without noticing obvious paradox.
Literature:
Winnicott D. Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self
Rozhders K. Counseling and psychotherapy
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