True self and false self a personal mission by self-confessed narcissist and author Sam Vaknin to raise the profile of the condition. Vaknin has highlighted the role of the false self in narcissism. The false self replaces the narcissist's true self and is intended to shield him from hurt and narcissistic injury by self-imputing omnipotence. The narcissist pretends that his false self is real and demands that others affirm this confabulation, meanwhile keeping his real imperfect true self under wraps. For Vaknin, the false self is by far more important to the narcissist than his dilapidated, dysfunctional true self; and in contrast to the psychoanalysts
Campbell's Soup Cans escape Lichtenstein's lengthening shadow. Although his soup cans were not as shocking and vulgar as some of his other early pop art, they still offended the art world's sensibilities that had developed so as to partake in the intimate emotions of artistic expression. Contrasting against Caravaggio's sensual baskets of fruit, Chardin's plush peaches, or Cézanne's vibrant arrangements of apples, the mundane "Campbell's Soup Cans" gave the art world a chill. Furthermore, the idea of isolating eminently recognizable pop culture items was ridiculous enough to the art world that both the merits and ethics of the work were perfectly reasonable debate