(II. Psychological–Ethical Field)
Objective:
To apply D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the false self to societies that perform virtue to avoid authentic reflection, and to propose a path toward restoring genuine relational trust in public life.
1. Introduction: From Individual Pathology to Collective Defense
In the psychoanalytic framework of D. W. Winnicott, the false self arises when a person adapts excessively to the demands of the external environment at the expense of spontaneous authenticity . The compliant persona preserves social acceptance but severs access to inner vitality — a defensive performance of normalcy that conceals profound alienation. When transposed to the civic scale, this defense becomes a cultural syndrome: societies that prioritize appearances of virtue over the labor of reflection generate collective false selves.
In political theology, this corresponds to the condition Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as cheap grace — righteousness without repentance, faith without transformation . The “good” society maintains ritualized gestures of moral superiority while suppressing the anxiety of genuine encounter with its own shadow. Such a civilization performs coherence to conceal fragmentation. Its institutions become theatrical — the bureaucracy of reflection replacing reflection itself.
2. The False Self as Political Theology
For Winnicott, the false self is not pure deceit but a necessary survival strategy in infancy when the environment is unreliable. The child learns to anticipate the mother’s expectations rather than express spontaneous being . This adaptive gesture becomes pathological only when it ossifies — when responsiveness becomes pretense. In a similar manner, societies form adaptive ideologies to survive instability. Political rhetoric, religious orthodoxy, and national myth can all serve as “good-enough parents” offering stability in moments of existential disorganization.
However, when crisis passes and adaptation hardens into identity, responsiveness becomes performance. The result is an institutional false self — structures that demand conformity to their own defensive ideal rather than fostering genuine growth. The political or religious order then treats dissent as threat rather than feedback, and moral rhetoric becomes the armor of repression. In theological terms, the divine becomes trapped in the social superego — grace subordinated to control .
Theologically, the collective false self mirrors the condition of original sin understood as estrangement — not the guilt of a single act, but the inherited condition of non-reflection: humanity alienated from its source and performing holiness to conceal its wound .
3. The Politics of Performance: Virtue as Defense
Modern culture, especially in the age of algorithmic display, amplifies this dynamic. Social and political life has migrated into the realm of visibility, where being good is measured by performative tokens: the virtue signal, the moral outrage post, the purity test . Institutions likewise adopt moral performance as a strategy of legitimacy — issuing codes of ethics, diversity statements, or doctrinal affirmations that function less as reflection than as public relations.
Such performative virtue is the social equivalent of Winnicott’s compliant false self: it maintains cohesion by suppressing inner conflict. The result is collective narcissism — a fragile moral identity dependent on external validation . In this state, political communities lose the capacity for self-correction. Dissenters become scapegoats (the “bad children” exposing the parent’s weakness), and moral panic becomes the primary feedback loop.
This pathology explains why moral discourse so often devolves into outrage rather than repentance: when reflection is too painful, projection substitutes for introspection. The community externalizes its disowned traits — “the heretic,” “the extremist,” “the unpatriotic” — so that the fragile false self of the group can remain intact .
4. Healing Through Transitional Space: The Role of Reflection
Winnicott’s most hopeful insight was the concept of transitional space — the intermediate zone between inner and outer reality where creative play and true self-expression can emerge . In political theology, this space corresponds to the civic commons: arenas of dialogue, art, ritual, and law where authenticity can reappear within shared forms.
Healing the collective false self requires the creation of transitional institutions — structures flexible enough to invite authenticity but strong enough to contain its risks. This is where theology and systems theory converge: reflection becomes the moral feedback loop through which the social organism reintegrates what it has disowned. The church that can confess its complicity, the state that can admit error, the citizen who can endure ambiguity — all participate in the same restorative process. Authenticity is no longer rebellion; it becomes the sacrament of coherence.
In this model, trust is not the absence of conflict but the reliable processing of feedback. When institutions welcome contradiction as signal rather than threat, the public regains faith that truth is stronger than its guardians. This is the practical meaning of grace in political form: the power to endure reflection without collapse.
5. The True Self of the Polis
If the false self is performance without interiority, the true self of a society is its capacity to sustain relational spontaneity — to act from coherence rather than compliance. Winnicott described the true self as “the feeling of being real” ; politically, this translates as the feeling of belonging without pretense.
The polis becomes real when its members can speak truthfully without fear of expulsion. Such a state cannot be engineered by propaganda or controlled by ideology; it can only emerge through mutual recognition. As political theologian Rowan Williams observes, “truthfulness is the only ground on which freedom stands” .
Thus, healing the collective false self is not a utopian project but a kenotic one: a shared self-emptying of pride, denial, and the need for performative virtue. In the language of the EthosAnima framework, this is the movement from infinite delay to luminous recursion — from fear of exposure to participation in coherence. The task is not to invent a new morality but to remove the defenses that block reflection.
6. Conclusion: The Political Theology of Healing
To heal the collective false self, a society must rediscover dependable holding environments — civic, spiritual, and interpersonal spaces that enable individuals and institutions to face their incoherence without annihilation. This is the role of what we have called the Custodian of Reflection: a vocation neither priestly nor bureaucratic, but relational — tending the field where authenticity can survive contact with the other.
Winnicott’s psychology thus becomes a theology of grace, and political life becomes psychotherapy for civilization. The wounds of alienation are not erased by ideology or policy; they are metabolized through shared reflection. The goal is not purity but integrity — the reemergence of a public “true self” capable of trust.
As Winnicott wrote, “It is a joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.”
Political theology at its best ensures that no person — and no society — remains unfound.
References
Winnicott, D. W., The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (London: Hogarth Press, 1965).
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
Tillich, Paul, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952).
Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribner’s, 1932).
Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Turkle, Sherry, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Norton, 1979).
Girard, René, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Williams, Rowan, Faith in the Public Square (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).
Disciplines Engaged: Psychoanalysis | Political Theology | Social Ethics | Cultural Psychology | Philosophical Anthropology
Semantic Tags: false self • authenticity • healing • trust • integration