true self

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

The true self, in RB2’s brief Winnicottian formulation mediated through Bollas, is the authentic self expressed through spontaneous bodily gesture and early play. The proposed subentry retains that relational and embodied sense without treating authenticity as a hidden immutable substance, importing an undeveloped account of the false self or making spontaneity an automatic test of psychological or ethical worth.

Explanation

The defining passage explicitly connects Bollas’s unthought known with Winnicott’s true self and the ambiance of early mother–child play. It supplies a bounded conceptual connection, not an exhaustive statement of either author’s clinical theory. The native reference preserves the linked Bollas and Winnicott provenance without adding unprovided doctrines.

The surrounding account locates aesthetics, play and creativity within early bodily experience that may remain unarticulated. This is an attributed developmental influence rather than a claim that one infancy event wholly determines an adult’s creative life. Spontaneous gesture identifies a mode of expression, not proof that every impulse is authentic or justified.

AB describes selfhood as maintained organization and continuity, while its infant account makes responsive relations formative. These comparisons help keep the local concept embodied and relational without substituting the author’s process ontology for Winnicott’s theoretical vocabulary. The proposed entry provides no diagnostic criterion or promise of a discoverable final inner essence.

Scope and attribution

Preserve the mediated Winnicott attribution and narrow local warrant without inventing clinical tests.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Bollas links Winnicottian spontaneous bodily expression with preverbal relational history.

Occurrence locators: 88.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Winnicottian spontaneous gesture is distinguished from generic maintained selfhood.