Healing

Apr 1
4 min read

April 1, 2026

by FFrances

In the 1960s there was a popular idea in psychology of the True Self and the False Self, terms coined by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. The True Self was the self, which was based on authentic experience of being alive. False Self was the term used to describe a self, which was a façade created in response to trying to meet the expectations of others. The idea has become quite established, and developed further, perhaps because the words seem to hold some ordinary and recognizable common-sense meaning.

I was brought to thinking about this in the context of the events of the weeks leading to Easter Sunday and the resurrection. The resurrected Jesus must surely be the True Self. And yet he says to Mary Magdeleine, “Do not touch me, I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Is he suggesting only in heaven reunited with God, does he become his true self? Is that the same for all of us?

I recoil at the idea of false selves and reject the idea that the many faces I wear to get through the day are false. Surely it is truer to see them as ways of adapting and surviving the exigencies of life. And is surviving surely a way of being truly alive? When one is full up with the demands of the day, the week, the month, families, colleagues, the news, poverty and obscene wealth, politics of right and left, degradation of the earth, the plight of refugees, water shortage, floods, war, violence against women, violence of any sort, death, loss, change…what can you do to stay alive, to stay sane? What do you do with the painful knots in your stomach which you know could easily become vomit or floods of tears or even crazy if you were to stop and feel truly in touch with it all?

Maybe one way that might help is to name all the false self faces that you present to the world in order to cope. The joker, the victim, the competent, the omnipotent parent, the omniscient one who doesn’t make a mistake, the ditherer, the washer woman, the feeder, the nurturer…fill in your own favorites.

Every week at the Community of St Bridget we say something like, “All are welcome at our Tables of Friendship” and take Communion together. Jesus in Luke 14 tells us to invite to our table the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. How would it be if we recognized and named those false selves we present to the world as the poor, crippled, lame, and blinded, the wounded parts of ourselves that need healing? Jesus often asks, “What do you want from me?” Perhaps we could name and bring these different selves to Jesus for healing, not to condemn them as inauthentic or superficial, but to recognize and offer them as part of the true self. St Paul suggests we are one body, made of many parts, and so we are. One body, and one body with each other in Christ.