ABSTRACT
This chapter, a sequel to McIntosh’s “Feeling Like a Fraud” (Stone Center Work in Progress No. 18, 1985), posits a baseline sense of authenticity which gives one the ability to have feelings of fraudulence. The sense of authenticity creates the awareness of a lack of fit between what one feels and what is said about one’s virtue or competence, or expected in public behavior. Vignettes of situations inducing feelings of fraudulence are contrasted with vignettes of experiments in teaching or public speaking which involve newly invented forms and which have brought feelings of authenticity in public performance. The talk is cast in the metaphor of a house tour, and features both a greenhouse and a Madwoman in the Attic. The analysis is placed in context of a theoretical model of a double and conflicting structure within the psyche and the society, in which over-rewarded, vertically oriented elements are contrasted with laterally oriented, affiliative, informal elements of a “home-sense.” Invention of less fraudulent forms for public performance may be made possible by taking a complex and pluralistic home-sense seriously. Such home-work is seen as societally desirable personal work for the creation of more broadly useful theory and public policy.
