ABSTRACT
In Donald W. Winnicott's work, the ego appears as a part of what he calls the global self, of which it is the principal organiser. Winnicott maintained throughout his work that the primitive self existing in the very heart of the human being must remain inviolable. Progressively "the true self quickly develops complexity, and relates external reality by natural processes, by such processes as develop in the individual infant in the course of time". "The central self could be said to be the inherited potential which is experiencing a continuity of being, and acquiring in its own way and at its own speed a personal psychic reality and a personal body-scheme". Winnicott puts the fact of "feeling real" at the heart of the feeling of self, and he always associated this idea with the idea which motivated him throughout his life, which is that the essential thing is to live creatively.
