ABSTRACT
In this paper, Winnicott presents the problem of what happens when an infant’s primary caregiver (mother) cannot adapt well enough to the infant’s needs and gestures. The infant must accept whatever he is getting, however divergent from his needs and signals that may be. The infant, then, is in the position of having to comply with the demands of the environment rather than having the environment comply with his needs and demands. As such, he is forced into building up a False Self with a false set of compliant needs and compliant responses, leading to a false relationship with both the mother and outside world. All of this is a contortion of his True Self, which, by these tactics he manages to hide from the outside world—and in some cases, from himself. The False Self, though it may be “well set up”—and though it may seem to be functioning quite well in life—lacks a certain something which Winnicott identifies as essential: the element of creative originality. It can also evidence itself, according to Winnicott, in the feeling that one has not started to exist.
