Identity is an all-encompassing sense of self, not fixed, handed down and developed unconsciously. Something shaped and determined, reflected in passion and behaviour, and gives directions and meaning to life. The imposter creates an “As If” persona, impoverished emotionally and physically, with an uncomfortable, disconnected relationship with others and the world, belied by a grandiose presentation of glamour and glitz. They are emotionally empty, disillusioned, anxious, confused, alienated and estranged from themselves and others. A false presentation does not fill the empty void and spaces within.
They narrate personal stories, a fiction composed of secret vicissitudes with which they engage. They develop a penchant for illusions and poses to keep away inner distress and psychological despair. They exhibit an elusive, flighty, dramatic, carefree, frivolous, sporadic, and chaotic approach. They must evolve out of denial, a fog of fantasy and delusion, into present experiences, an underlying distrust and lack of self-esteem, filling the emptiness with success, objects and pursuits to compensate for an inner abyss. Early emotional wounding and lack of care and close attunement with consistent patients, they become performers, needing attention and seeming self-contained and sufficient. They relate through mimicry with detachment at the expense of intimacy and authenticity. An unfinished mourning process due to interpersonal distress and lack of support.
The False Self
A protective casing/shell covering early failed attempts to establish the self in the face of a blank, unresponsive and inappropriate environment, misattuned to subjective reality, where one feels unseen, does not exist. The child loses any sense of creativity, aliveness and spontaneity with a deep sense of futility and desire, giving up trying to be seen and acknowledged. The child is seduced, manipulated and exploited into submission and complained by parental demands and unattainable expectations. Without mirroring, the child does not learn to feel and label their emotional state, can’t trust or validate their internal/external experiences, and is left isolated and alone. A fragile identity is frequently threatened with emotional turmoil and instability, where they don’t feel rooted and held together and easily fragment. It is a black hole of despair and abandonment, a deep dread and craving for connection, with an embedded anticipation that it will not be forthcoming. Retreats into intellectual irrationality split off from the body and access to the true self.
They will shift their identity to fit the occasion, hypervigilantly scanning for any perceived slights or unmasking of their persona. They are preoccupied with appearance, status, and success, comparing and competing with others and chasing fantastical dreams and delusions. They will avoid and exclude anyone who displeases or invalidates their grandiose image. Their striving for perfection and control never leaves them satisfied or fulfilled. Underneath, they feel like they don’t belong, detached and isolated, insufficient, flawed and riddled with internal conflicts and deficits. An inner self-hatred and inner contempt for the weak, despised, vulnerable aspect of the self split off and discarded into oblivion. There is no real sense of safety in the external world; the world is hostile, unforgiving, rejecting, and judgemental. Reality is replaced with phantasy and omnipotence, where one can be the best, in control, unchecked, infallible, and all-knowing.
Imagery of Body
We recognise the body, the unconscious knowing, where the deep psyche speaks. The Body works as a container, communicating personal complexes and experiences. The body represents the somatic expression of instinctual impulses and needs. One’s bodily image becomes damaged via emotional wounds and injuries, and body distortion leads to hatred, invisibility, and self-alienation. The body becomes the dumping ground of negativity, shame, and self-loathing. One may believe they are fundamentally ugly, flawed, and overweight, where they fear being seen and are open to ridicule and rejection. They become continually preoccupied with how others see, judge and desire them. They struggle with bodily shame and dysphoria at the extreme end and learn early on to devalue their body, feelings and experiences. The body becomes a negative complex /container and a bad object, developing destructive behaviour against the body for being flawed. An accurate assessment of one’s appearance shows us the fragility and disavowal of bodily experiences, which can easily crumble and fragment. Recovery comes through an honest look in the mirror, re-evaluating and confronting the distortions, and allowing oneself compassion and care for how they have treated oneself. This will mean a lengthy mourning process, loss and grief, along with relief for starting to feel alive and real.
One needs to buffer and stop the longing, craving and desperate need to be recognised and validated by someone who can’t give it to them. The “As If” personality tries to compensate via high achievement, illusionary prowess and material gains, which may elicit admiration and false validation. The psyche can’t transform or individuate if one remains in this grandiose delusion, stuck in outer perceived expectations and demands, blocking, hearing or responding to the true self. The result can be shallow, superficial, brittle, and conformist, lost in a wilderness between fantasy and reality—an inability to cope with complexity, ambiguity, frustration and difference, operating with futility. A weak, hypnotised, dominant and unavailable father keeps the child trapped in the narcissistic bubble; a lack of masculine energy and mirroring leads to self-denigrating habits and beliefs. The father influences all aspects of identity as the child moves away into the world and its possibilities.
The Father`s Shadow
Evil figures within our dreams and fairy tales represent the unconscious, the parts we have split off or repressed. The child may appear innocent, virginal and helpless within a negative father complex. The child tries to hide and be small and passive, leading to melancholy, chaos and despair. The yearning for recognition and aliveness is cut off and transposed with a manic defence against change to remain safe and protected. The child recoils from living, lacking authority and assertiveness to move into the world, stuck in limbo, undecided, unsettled, uncertain and lacking direction. Creativity, imagination and potential are all sacrificed and forbidden, as this would betray their father /parent. The child’s personality becomes frozen, stuck in self-absorption, depression or preoccupation with trying to fulfil parental dictates and demands. Love is craved, feared, and avoided; the other represents danger and difference and can’t be trusted or tolerated.
They cant hold the tension of opposites
Defence against afters shadow can result in the subjugation of the subjective self via splitting off negative experiences and maintaining psychological survival. They can relate to themselves individually and others, walled off by the barrier of father dominance and submission. They feel emasculated, especially in meaningfully intimate relationships and therapeutic transference—a life of buried desires and wishes, disturbed memories, and forgotten experiences. An innate mistrust and insecurity in body and mind, vitality and eros cut off and suppressed into an empty abyss. The child becomes paralysed, dead and numb with an unrequited emptiness, a hollow void. When the child experience any anxiety, they move towards destructive or obsessive drives and persecutory impulses, resulting in sabotaging behaviours. With no healthy male identification or engagement, the child is left with self-contempt and denies all self-expression and assertion, fearing punishment and humiliation. They have no container for emotions and anxiety, a nameless dread with minute methods of splitting and experience of fragmentation.
An inability to bear absence and loss of any kind, no time to compose thoughts or reactions, a manic search for an external container, someone to soothe and ease their anxiety. Moving from a merged state of oneness to twoness and separation reflects interpersonal growth.
Addictions
The addict uses alcohol, drugs and sex as a way to disassociate, number or ignite a dead inner emptiness. True love and intimacy have been relegated to the shadow and enacted in the body without relatedness and affect. The greater the shadow and repression, the more the acting out behaviour and destructive consequences. With an underlying feeling of detachment, disconnection and disillusionment with no inner coherence or compassion, this individual is vulnerable to addictive behaviour for soothing and excitement. A dread of anticipatory disappointment, frustration or rejection, they do not trust their inner world, where sterile, dangerous inner forces are hidden and camouflaged. The fear of the unknown, change and uncertainty leads to rigid routines and rituals, where there can’t be any rebirth without confusion, risk and suffering. Without the mask / armouting, there is nothing, no actual psychic reality, no inner representation in mind or body. The self remains cut off and hidden, dominated by fantasy and illusion, unable to face reality.
They use the addiction to bypass the tension between mind and body, grief, and memory. The other is ignored, a stranger, a distant object not worthy of investment and care—an underdeveloped or absent nurturing presence with a loss of love, care, concern and meaning. One`s zest and passion for life are compromised, as one can’t sustain pleasure from anything for long periods. A severe lack of connection and felt a sense of belonging leads to controlling behaviour, exploitation and manipulation. One can’t individuate without relating and owning their shadow; they must face their helplessness and vulnerability. A resultant affective immaturity and defensive impotence, resorting to grandiose fantasise to anaesthetise a terrified, isolated infantile part of self, which can be seductive, cunning and devious .impotence, is used to withdraw from conflicts, to develop an ability to love and care and to make most of their potential.
A preoccupation with the grandiose self and narrow emotional experiences means that everything of value remains in their sphere of influence, all under imaginary control. They cling to former glory days, feeling frozen nostalgia. Fearing any decline or ageing, they withdraw from the life process, fixed in past triumphs. A refusal to accept the unknown, uncontrolled, strange or distinguishing feelings and thoughts brings psychological dissonance. Survival and erasure, promise and excuses, constitute two sides of self-conceit and contempt that lead to self-hatred. Psychological walls are high and robust; no one gets in or out, providing isolation from others and self-alienation from the world. A distorted self-image, unable to maintain its grandiosity, with little true sense of being due to superficial social adaption to hide chronic emptiness, dissatisfaction, and envy. Recovery leads to gradual retrieval of spirit; with newfound energy, resources and supplies for self-esteem and discovery, the body is no longer objectified. Transference will move from one to twoness, with more subjectivity and separation. This allows space for the other to be contained and acknowledged, seen as a separate individual. The internal couple, masculine and feminine, are allowed to come together and conceive a rebirth.
The ability to let go of control, face the ambivalence of love and others, embrace positive and negative emotions and experiences, face our inadequacies and fallibility, and become an actual human being. They need to open up and allow others in, freely exchange ideas and feelings, and allow their personality to grow and develop. To learn to contain a tension of opposites, the loving object is the hated object, the self and the other in mutuality, to see what is different and the same, what is good and evil. Learn to stop comparing and competing with idealised images projected onto others, which leads to disappointment and deflation.
The narc becomes an observer of life, standing outside and unconnected, self-impoverished and detached.
The inertia of libido, which will relinquish no object of the past, holds onto the past forever; libido remains stuck in objects of childhood, trapped and frozen. If one does not trust reality, anticipated horror and rejection will devastate the fragile ego, trapped in compulsive behaviour, with self-deprecating thoughts and a lack of resolution. The psyche and body are bombarded with defeat and punishment, not loveable, imperfect and ugly, leading to self-hatred and contempt. A pathological superego develops, a complex dialectic oscillating between idealisation and devaluation of identification with the loved/hated mother, introjecting oneself to an image of ideal perfection or becoming a tyrannical, unforgiving judge. The narc is caught, trapped in an echo chamber, unable to perceive any other consciousness, always chasing illusions of sameness and a unified self. Passion remains unrequited as personality protects against creativity and imagination, and the belief in aliveness and agency is dangerous. Excitement at the beginning of pursuits soon petters out, unable to sustain disappointment or frustrations to push through anxiety and failures.
Internal emotional detachment, divorced from bodily experiences and responses, is the flight into grandiosity or codependency. Traumatic narc wounds lead to estrangement and disintegration from the self, a continuous conflict between ego and self, propelling a fundamental search for identity. The shadow is emptied via projections onto perceived harmful objects, a dumping ground for negative attributes and emotions. Within a glimpse of success and achievement, they suddenly quit and implode, feeling undeserving of such success, a fraud, and inadequate, undeserving of admiration. Shame and rage are divided into me versus them, overlaid with isolation and separateness. The narc holds enormous potential and an unlived life; they possess charm, intelligence and power if they allow themself to be vulnerable, to learn from others and to withdraw their grandiosity. The oscillation between longing for transformation and escape from construction combined with a need to cling to old images, to be safe and familiar, and not to endure any more injuries. A continuous clash between desire and fear, wanting, getting and reaching overcome by uncertainty, failure and disappointment. They can’t see or hold onto the longer picture and remain frozen and trapped, raging at old images and experiences.
Analysis opens old wounds of emptiness, betrayal, and abandonment to unravel one’s inner world. This promotes the capacity to sell reflection and provides new psychic space for exploration. To develop ego strength, engage with unconscious beliefs that dominate the psyche, engage with repressed destructive parts, and create a more profound vision of the psyche. To generate internal approval, cultivate a nurturing parent and a warrior spirit to engage with the world. To make a container, protective psychic skin, strong enough to experience negative feelings and experiences without detachment or withdrawal. Do not retreat to the void, solitary space of confinement, protection against anticipatory harm or rejection, defend against the impact of others or impacting others. Busy cultivating an accepted grandiose image, deflecting from inner pain and suffering, remaining in denial of one’s experience for concrete thinking and beliefs and keeping one busy.
One can’t experience or accept love, leaving one starving and confused.
There is a transference of sameness in therapy, so nothing new emerges. It is a strange twinship, unconsciously symbiotic, defensive without differentiation. The psyche remains internally untouched and cannot interrupt the self-care system. The body becomes the dumping ground of negativity, split off, owning the badness, inadequacy, and pain, not good enough for intimacy. A continuous unfavourable comparison to others they believe possess attributes they don’t, hidden furious envy, is usually denied via devaluation of the idealised object to remain superior .precoccipesd with what is lacking in these distorted comparisons, fuelling the self-contempt and hatred and caught between a compulsive desire to be the best and be admired and yet fearing rejection and disintegration. Envy constricts, restricts, and gardens the heart, creating an ingrained feeling of inferiority where one feels flawed, shame-ridden, and abandoned. Envy is used to avoid oneself, remain trapped in false beliefs, hold onto distorted images and beliefs, and stay safe yet profoundly empty and frustrated. An innate lack of trust due to a breakdown in early intersubjectivity leads to being unseen for one’s achievement and success, developing a fragile base desiring admiration of approval, yet presenting those who have; they will diminish themself, make themself small and passive to avoid envious comparisons and to endure any perceived weaknesses.
Envy can tarnish dreams, relationships and hope; nothing is ever enough, and one is never good enough compared to idols. One is too fat, too old, too stupid, facing vulnerability and as ens of being ordinary seems impossible. Fears of failure become paralysing. One stands still and stops, retreating with contempt. Envy requires longing, self-betrayal, bitterness, and a deep desire for vengeance against the hostile/ rejecting object. Dreams are surrendered and become pointless, a painful abyss, feeling out of control and unloved. Desire is too big; love is withheld, and internalised anger for one’s misgivings and flaws. Being envious stops one from taking in good, positive experiences and feelings. Envy is associated with the forbidden and unspeakable due to inauthentic relating, unsupported and unaccepted, where a wall is erected to hide any perceived or imagined weakness. Indignant defiance turns into impotence and collapses within, ensuring one can’t get or ask for what one wants/needs. Oscillating between omnipotence and powerlessness, a need to appear strong, all-knowing, independent, and secure. Talks of meaningless and lack of agency in therapy as no one cares or makes a difference.
Unaware of self-imposed and self-inflicted nihilism trapped within unresolved rage and envy. Caught in a lifelong search to express a genuine and spontaneous self and find a place with others, form a sense of belonging. As individuals unfold and confront their shadow, emptying repressed grief and loss, they face moral choices and challenges. To fight and confront their internalised punishing superego, to stand up to internalised old objects, and to be okay with being seen and heard. Therapy helps renegotiate these wounded aspects and disentangle and disrupt envious and defensive strategies while revealing psychic pain. An increased awareness of one’s denial and guard against reality, identifying inhibiting roles and behaviour, starting to grieve losses of idealised objects and finding one’s voice. The ego’s envy of the alienated self creates a profound sense of despair and deadly malevolence.
Unmasking reality threatens the impoverished ego as they cannot see others as deprived and wanting.
The therapeutic space creates a new container, a potential space for growth, where one can explore, discuss and make new decisions. To reconnect to the true self and its vitality, to retrace memories and to fill the voids of the fragmented self. They are naming and visualising obstacles and beliefs to embrace joy and tragedy into a warmer, more prosperous, conscious life. A working alliance establishes trust and evolves through a relationship, which depends on connection, separation, rupture, and repair. Therapy allows clients to take up a third position and promotes the imaginal capacity to observe, enabling images to emerge from the unconscious and to find new meaning. To create a supportive and holding environment to face one’s suffering, to participate in the interplay of conscious/unconscious forces. The negative mother archetype develops, dominates and becomes internalised, attacking the child’s relationship with their body and notion of differences and subjectivity.
Mother was unable to nourish, comfort and shelter her child; trauma manifested as an idealisation of the imagined object (ideal mother). Our body represents a core basis of subjectivity, intimacy, and self-expression, where non-verbal cues are acknowledged and understood, and instinct is permitted and encouraged. The mother does not mirror a loving sense of self, so the child seeks a merger or search for an idealised replacement space to recognise self and object, to become The dead mother is psychologically dead; she has killed off her inner life, unable to contain emotions or feelings, and inducing guilt in the child if they express any form of spontaneity or autonomy. She is omnipresent and persuasive and imprisons the child, where love is not possible but still craved. She persists in owning the child, to be all-encompassing, an unconscious tyranny under the guise of loyalty, love and devotion.
Schwartz, S, E. (2023): Imposter Syndrome and The ‘As-If’ Personality in Analytical Psychology: The Fragility of Self, Routledge; 1st edition (26 Sept. 2023)
