真自我和假自我

（英文原文来自The School of Life）

来自The School of Life

为什么我们作为成年人，在心智上会陷入麻烦，一个最意外但却最有力的解释是，在我们早年，我们被拒绝了对去全然成为自己的机会的要求。就是说，我们不被允许任性、不被允许难搞定，我们不可以苛刻、不可以有侵略性、不能没有一点容忍、不能无限制地自私，不可以如同我们自身本该需要的。

来自The School of Life

因为我们的看护人心不在焉或很脆弱，我们不得不以一种异常的方式与他们的要求协调，感觉我们为了被爱和宽恕就不得不顺从；我们不得不先是错的，在我们有机会去感受正确地活着之前。结果呢，在多年之后，由于没有完全理解这个过程，我们就会有感觉到漂泊无根、内在死亡和总觉得不能完全呈现自己的风险。

来自The School of Life

这个关于真我和假我的心理学理论，是二十世纪最伟大思想家之一，英国精神分析学家和儿童精神病学家唐纳德温尼科特的成果。从1960年代些的一系列论文中，和基于对他的成年和婴幼儿病人的近距离观察中，他先进地提出一个观点，那就是，健康的成长，总是需要我们经历一段无边无际的、维持生命的奢侈，在我们还不是不得不为考验着我们看护者的那些感受和观点烦恼的时候。这时，我们可以没有负罪感地万全地做真我，因为暂时，围在我们周围的人会完全调整他们自己，去配合我们的需要和渴望，虽然这并不方便而且费力。

来自The School of Life

在温尼科特的构想中，婴儿的真我生来就是非社交和非道德的。真我对别人的感受没兴趣，它也不是社会化的。它会尖叫在它需要时，即使在午夜或在拥挤的火车上。在一个对规矩一丝不苟的人或者卫生的爱慕者眼里，它可能是有侵略性的、刺痛的、可怕的，还有点恶心。它想在任何地方，以它想的方式表达。这当然对它来说是甜蜜的，但这不是为了吸引爱，或通过交易获得爱。如果一个人作为一个成年人要有任何感受到真实的感觉，那么就必须曾经享受过，像这样无边无际的“能够真实的”情绪上的特权。

来自The School of Life

去打扰人们当它想时，去踢当它生气时，去尖叫当它厌烦时，去咬当它正在感受侵略时。当它大怒时，孩子的真我必须被赋予这种想象的机会去摧毁父母，然后目击父母的存活和不朽，而这个见证借给孩子一个生死悠关的、无边无际的使人心安的感觉——它事实上并不万能，而且世界也不会仅仅因为它有时希望或害怕的那样而坍塌。如果事情进展顺利，孩子会发展出一个假我，一种可以根据外界事实的要求表现的能力。就是这，使一个小孩能够服从严格的学校，以及，如它发展在一个成年人中，就是服从工作着的生活（working life）。如果我们曾经被给与做我们的真我，那么在任何场合，我们就不需要去反抗和坚持我们的需求。我们可以跟随规矩，因为曾经有一段时间，可以完全忽视它们。

来自The School of Life

换句话说，温尼科特不是假我彻底的敌人；他足够能理解它的角色，他只是坚持认为，只有在真我早期曾经有一段不受限制的经历的前提下，它才属于健康。不幸的是，我们很多人不曾享受过那样理想的开端。也许妈妈抑郁，或者父亲经常暴怒，可能有个年长或年幼的兄弟姐妹正有危机且需要所有的关注。结果就是，我们将极早地学着开始顺从；我们将变得顺从，而代价，就是我们感受真实的自己的能力。在关系中，我们现在能对我们伴侣的需求礼貌和配合，但并不是那种意义的能够正确地去爱。在工作中，我们可能尽职，但没有创造性，没有独创性。

来自The School of Life

在某种情境中，心理治疗提供我们第二次机会，而这正是它的天赋之处。在一个好的治疗师手中，我们被允许回溯到我们开始作假我之前的时候，回到我们不顾一切地（desperiately）需要做真我的时刻。

来自The School of Life

在治疗师的办公室里，被他们的成熟和关心安全地容纳着，我们可以再一次，学着去真实；我们可以放纵、难搞、对任何人冷漠除了自己、自私、不引人注目、有侵略性的并且令人震惊。治疗师会拿着它（take it），从而帮助我们去经历一种新的对活着的力量（aliveness）的感觉，本该从一开始就有的感觉。永远不会走开的，对做假我的要求，变得可以承受了，因为我们有规律地，被允许一周一次左右做真我。

来自The School of Life

当他的患者试着去重新找回他们的真我时，温尼科特在这方面对他们出了名的冷静和宽宏大量。他们中的一个把他特别喜欢的一个花瓶弄得粉碎，另一个偷了他的钱，第三个一次结一次地在会谈中冲他辱骂性地吼叫。但是温尼科特还能镇静，能了解到，这是病人回到健康，远离那些使他们生活其他时候很苦恼的致命的虚假的旅程的一部分。

来自The School of Life

我们可以感谢温尼科特，因为他提醒我们，满足和一种对于真实的感觉，不得不经过一些几乎没有限制的有流氓性质的自私自利的阶段。坦白讲，没有其他办法。我们不得不先做真我，在我们有效地做一点假我之前。而且如果我们从未被允许过，那么我们的疾病和抑郁就会出现，提醒我们需要后退一步，治疗就在那里，允许我们这么做。

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The True and the False Self

（英文原文来自The School of Life）

来自The School of Life

One of the most surprising but powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be in trouble mentally is that we were, in our earliest years, denied the opportunity to be fully ourselves, that is, we were not allowed to be wilful and difficult, we could not be as demanding, aggressive, intolerant, and unrestrictedly selfish as we needed to be.

来自The School of Life

Because our caregivers were preoccupied or fragile, we had to be preternaturally attuned to their demands, sensing that we had to comply in order to be loved and tolerated; we had to be false before we had the chance to feel properly alive. And as a result, many years later, without quite understanding the process, we risk feeling unanchored, inwardly dead and somehow not entirely present.

来自The School of Life

This psychological theory of the True and the False Self is the work of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, the English psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist Donald Winnicott. In a series of papers written in the 1960s and based on close observations of his adult and infant patients, Winnicott advanced the view that healthy development invariably requires us to experience the immense, life-sustaining luxury of a period when we do not have to bother with the feelings and opinions of those who are tasked with looking after us. We can be wholly and, without guilt, our True Selves, because those around us have – for a time – adapted themselves entirely to our needs and desires, however inconvenient and arduous these might be.

来自The School of Life

The true self of the infant, in Winnicott’s formulation, is by nature asocial and amoral. It isn’t interested in the feelings of others, it isn’t socialised. It screams when it needs to – even if it is the middle of the night or on a crowded train. It may be aggressive, biting and – in the eyes of a stickler for manners or a lover of hygiene – shocking and a bit disgusting. It wants to express itself where and how it wants. It can be sweet of course but on its own terms, not in order to charm or bargain for love. If a person is to have any sense of feeling real as an adult, then it has to have enjoyed the immense emotional privilege of being able to be true in this way.

来自The School of Life

To disturb people when it wants, to kick when it is angry, to scream when it is tired, to bite when it is feeling aggressive. The True Self of the child must be granted the imaginative opportunity to destroy the parent when it is in a rage – and then witness the parent surviving and enduring, which lends the child a vital and immensely reassuring sense that it is not in fact omnipotent, and that the world won’t collapse simply because it sometimes wishes or fears it could. When things go well, gradually and willingly, the child develops a False Self, a capacity to behave according to the demands of external reality. This is what enables a child to submit to the rigours of school and, as it develops into an adult, of working life as well. When we have been given the chance to be our true selves we do not, at every occasion, need to rebel and insist on our needs. We can follow the rules because we have, for a time, been able to ignore them entirely.

来自The School of Life

In other words, Winnicott was not a thorough enemy of a False Self; he understood its role well enough, he simply insisted that it belonged to health only when it had been preceded by a thorough earlier experience of an untrammelled True Self. Unfortunately, many of us have not enjoyed such an ideal start. Perhaps mother was depressed, or father was often in a rage, maybe there was an older or younger sibling who was in a crisis and required all the attention. The result is that we will have learnt to comply far too early; we will have become obedient at the expense of our ability to feel authentically ourselves. In relationships, we may now be polite and geared to the needs of our partners, but not for that matter able properly to love. At work, we may be dutiful but uncreative and unoriginal.

来自The School of Life

In such circumstances, and this is its genius, psychotherapy offers us a second chance. In the hands of a good therapist, we are allowed to regress before the time when we started to be False, back to the moment when we so desperately needed to be true.

来自The School of Life

In the therapist’s office, safely contained by their maturity and care, we can learn – once more – to be real; we can be intemperate, difficult, unconcerned with anyone but ourselves, selfish, unimpressive, aggressive and shocking. And the therapist will take it – and thereby help us to experience a new sense of aliveness which should have been there from the start. The demand to be False, which never goes away, becomes more bearable because we are regularly being allowed, in the privacy of the therapist’s room, once a week or so, to be True.

来自The School of Life

Winnicott was famously calm and generous towards his patients when they were attempting to refind their True Selves in this way. One of them smashed a favourite vase of his, another stole his money, a third shouted insults at him session after session. But Winnicott was unruffled, knowing that this was part of a journey back towards health, away from the deadly fakeness afflicting these patients in the rest of their lives.

来自The School of Life

We can be grateful to Winnicott for reminding us that contentment and a feeling of reality have to pass through stages of almost limitless delinquent selfishness. There is simply no other way. We have to be True before we can be usefully a bit fake – and if we have never been allowed, then our sickness and depression is there to remind us that we need to take a step back, and therapy is there to allow us to do so.

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