Citation

Lewis CN. J. Pers. Assess. 1990; 54(3-4): 656-670.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1990, Society for Personality Assessment, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00223891.1990.9674027

PMID

2348348

Abstract

A Rorschach record and a narrative poem are examined to determine how imagination expresses the psychological trauma of being exposed as an impostor. The subject had been trained as a medical corpsman and deceived people under the grandiose fantasy of being a doctor. The role of the impostor physician is seen as an imaginative identity that was designed with an adaptive purpose. A Jungian analysis of his suicide attempt and the Rorschach suggest that the impostor role was a masculine compensatory fantasy that served as a counterforce to negative maternal imagery, linked to death, that is present in his imagination.

Language: en

Keywords

Adaptation, Psychological; Creativity; Fantasy; Fraud; Humans; Jungian Theory; Life Change Events; Male; Middle Aged; Personality Development; Poetry as Topic; Psychoanalytic Theory; Psychotherapy; Rorschach Test; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic; Suicide, Attempted