ABSTRACT
In this paper, first published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 1955, Helene Deutsch spells out the behavior and psychodynamics of imposturing in a psychopath. Through the case of Jimmy, a patient whom she saw for eight years, she describes the inflated ego ideal of the impostor, fostered by a very successful and dominant father and an indulgent and anxious mother. The passive entitlement of the impostor, moreover, leads to his pretending that his grandiose fantasies have been realized, rather than choosing a course of sustained effort to achieve real success. Treatment progress for Jimmy increased feelings of anxiety at being “unmasked” and inferiority. Deutsch concludes that certain imposturing is normal, since we often “pretend that we are actually what we would like to be.”
