ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author shows how her attempt to maintain a stance of analytic neutrality occasionally resulted in false-self behaviour on her part and how her momentary movements away from that position both paralleled and facilitated the emergence of the true self of her patient. She offers a clinical account of an intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy treatment with her patient whom she had had in treatment for just under ten years. The author relies heavily on Winnicott’s well-known true self/false self conceptualization to form the basis of her theoretical stance, and she questions the viability of maintaining an “analytically neutral” stance when working with patients who display a marked false self.
