I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Tuesday Book Club, I share an idea from a book.
What, then, is a true self? The English pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott pioneered the notions of a true and false self. He proposed that the true self experiences being alive directly. The true self enables us to be authentic and real, so we can feel our own feelings in a deep and unforced way. Winnicott believed that our experience of true feelings and aliveness allows us to be genuinely close to others and to be creative.
In contrast, a false self serves as a psychological mechanism by which we defend ourselves against real and imagined threats. A false self creates a mask that allows us to comply with the expectations of others, never showing what we really think or feel. We can spend long years in the tension between our true and false self. We can also characterize this tension as the struggle between being real and being seen as good.
\Mark Nepo, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life
On considering the existence of a false self and a true self, you might think that you need to cultivate a self that is independent and autonomous, but, according to Winnicott, your creativity and your ability to get close to others, occurs in relationship, not via separation from the world outside you:
It is in the space between inner and outer world, which is also the space between people–the transitional space–that intimate relationships and creativity occur.
This idea of an in-between space was not unique to Winnicott, according to social work professor Laura Praglin:
Martin Buber (1878-1965), German Jewish social philosopher and theologian, and D.W. Winnicott (1896-1971), British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, portray in vibrant detail the reality of the “in-between”. Although contemporaries, they were separated by country and profession, and did not know each other. Yet both set forth in their writings remarkably complementary views concerning “in-between space”–the transitional area, to Winnicott, or das Zwischenmenschliche to Buber. This is a meeting-ground of potentiality and authenticity, located neither within the self nor in the world of political and economic affairs. In this space, one finds the most authentic and creative aspects of our personal and communal existence, including artistic, scientific, and religious expression.
Buber’s philosophy of relationship
Buber, best known for his existential philosophy of dialogue, proposed that this in-between space (the “zwischen” as a shorter term than the long German one above) is the realm where genuine relationships and meaning arise.
In his work I and Thou from 1923, Buber describes two primary modes of engagement:
- I-It: A utilitarian, objectifying relationship where the other is a thing to be used or analyzed.
- I-Thou: A reciprocal, present, and holistic relationship where the other is encountered as a whole being.
In the I-Thou relationship, the “in-between” is not a physical space but a relational field—a living, dynamic space where the “I” and the “Thou” meet authentically.
The relational field is where the true self can express her creative potential and her drive to build intimacy.
Transactional vs true relationships
One reason humans are so driven to find romantic relationships is because they create an in-between where creativity and intimacy can flourish. In an I-Thou relationship, true selves come together as individuals and as full people. However, many relationships devolve to I-It rather than I-Thou. “What can you do for me?” asks a person in an I-It relationship.
Many relationships start because one or both of the participants are looking for an I-It transaction: A woman looks for a provider while a man looks for a younger sex partner; a hobosexual man looks for a living situation, in return for providing companionship to a financially secure woman; an attractive foreigner wants to come to the U.S., and a U.S. citizen is willing to sponsor them; an older man looks for a “nurse with a purse;” a man wants a mommy figure to finally make him feel okay about himself.
I have an old friend who has found himself in an I-It relationship. He met his now-wife decades ago, and they very quickly committed to one another, she moving from Texas to live with him here in Colorado. It became clear over time she was with him so he could provide for her, not because she wanted a reciprocal I-Thou type relationship. Now they don’t have significant physical or emotional intimacy.
I think too of Danielle from 90 Day Fiancé, who brought Mohammed Jbali from Tunisia to be her husband. At one point, Danielle declares, “I want my sex tonight. If you don’t give me my sex tonight, I will, I will, I will call the immigration. I will get you deported.” This so clearly demonstrates the transaction at the base of their relationship. He wanted a green card. She wanted a hot young man to give her sex.
I think of the relationship I’m writing an essay about right now, where my romantic partner thought that I existed as an appendage of him; that everything I did including my paintings were about him; that I should watch the television shows he liked; that I should be available to travel where and when he wanted. To him, I didn’t exist as a Thou only as an It.
That’s a difficult essay to write, because how do I portray him as a full character of his own when he seemingly had reduced me to something to fulfill his every need? He was looking for a maternal figure but I already had three kids that I was mother to. This is probably a topic for a future post, but I’ll leave an observation here from Kate Manne: “Misogyny hates a woman who can frankly admit things.”
Perhaps part of finding my true self means that I don’t have to pretend that each man I was in relationship with treated me as a Thou rather than an It. Many of them did seek true I-Thou relationships, but some of them did not. This is a struggle between being real and being seen as good, as Nepo described in the quote that began this post. I imagine my essays will be most powerful if I am real about them, real about my flaws and real about my partners’ flaws too.