A False Interior Self

In contrast to our true self, whose discovery entails a ruthless stripping down, people may withdraw into their inner self in a manner that only further reifies their exterior, false self. The exterior self may indeed develop interior depths of its own making which it nurses. These unconscious recesses of neurosis and psychosis may exist precisely because our enculturated self is not properly understood by our consciousness, but is developed by infantile and introjected substitutes that seamlessly dovetail with the notions that we fabricate about our identity. These are simultaneously and subtly buried in our subconscious because we use them to camouflage and justify our drives for pleasure; they are born out of a drive for self-fulfillment, not self-denial. While many people believe that this is a form of interiority, it is none other than a false self. All modern pseudo-religious disciplines fall in this category.