Page 14 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 16
P. 14
complexes derived from physiological and and “going-on-being.” Given an environ-
environmental factors were the most im- ment of “good-enough mothering,” an in-
portant aspects of the unconscious. fant with normal physical and neurological
In Christian prayer and contemplation, in health will be able to relate to the external
contrast to Freudian psychoanalysis, the world as an autonomous self who can act
greatest illusion being confronted is a spiri- spontaneously, without coercion, and yet
tual one: the false assumption that people who can also live well with others.
exist in themselves (i.e., apart from God). Winnicott used the term false self to de-
In contemplative prayer, people are forced scribe what results when the infant’s needs
to encounter the existential dread of their are repeatedly not met, forcing the infant
autonomy, which they have tried to avoid to react to caregiver coercion. If care is not
by means of their false self. sufficient and forces the infant to comply
Also, unlike many modern psychological and adapt to the parent, the infant’s self is
therapies, contemplative prayer happens essentially being rejected. In place of the
in the midst of daily mundane activities; for (true) self and in its defense, a false self
Merton (1969), prayer occurs in the liturgy emerges that complies with the environ-
sung in choir, at chores, and on the porch ment to make peace, but at the cost of the
listening to the wind in the trees. Prayer is infant’s sense of having an authentic self.
of “the heart,” meaning that a person prays To the degree that compliance is necessa-
out of “the deepest psychological ground ry the true self will be more or less hidden
of one’s personality.” The true self is dis- by the false self in succeeding years after
covered through prayer not by focusing on infancy.
myself, but on Christ, allowing Jesus’ name Whereas the false self results from discon-
to occupy my heart. By focusing on Jesus, nection or splitting within a person, the
we gradually learn to discard the false sel- true self results from one’s integration. In
ves of our own making and come to live out psychological health, self-consciousness is
our true selves. not a function of some localized part of the
body (e.g., brain) but of the “psyche-soma,”
Secular Psychologists: Winnicott and Har- the integrated mind and body (Winnicott
ter 1975). Where there is a split between mind
Donald W. Winnicott was the first modern and body, however, there is also a split bet-
psychologist to extensively discuss the true ween true self and false self.
self and false self in those terms. He was Also, whereas the false self is characterized
part of the “British school” of object rela- by compliance and defensiveness, the true
tions theory, which traced its heritage to self is marked by independence and spon-
Freud and psychoanalytic psychology but taneity. The goal of therapy, then, is essen-
set itself apart from other schools by con- tially to foster the patient’s true self, wean
centrating on the first few years of life. the patient from the false self, and facilita-
Winnicott’s view of healthy self-develop- te the patient’s growth towards indepen-
ment starts very early in life between infant dence so that he or she can relate authen-
and mother when the infant’s “core self” tically and competently with the world.
or ego begins to thrive. Essential to normal Susan Harter was a developmental psycho-
human development and mental health is logist who focused her research on the co-
gaining a certain kind of self-awareness, gnitive and social construction of the self. In
which Winnicott (1986) described as a con- her magnum opus, The Construction of the
fidence in one’s “aliveness,” “feeling real,”
17
