The following paper was originally written several years ago as a draft document:
This document is an outgrowth of focusing on a specific question used in an employee survey. That question is: "I feel that I can be myself at work?" The multiple-choice checkboxes on the survey form ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
I find this particular question fascinating, for not only did the survey designers consider it to be important by designating it a "key driver" of employee satisfaction, it seems to raise other meaningful questions. If one can't be one's self then who is one being exactly? It seems that if one is not being one’s self, one is rather presenting something else, a “false self” perhaps, a term that was introduced by Donald Winnicott1 and elaborated on here by R.D. Laing:2
"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."
"Highly creative people are probably highly creative because of certain cognitive mechanisms that also would predispose them to symptoms of mental disorder if they didn't have additional protective factors."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/living/brian-wilson-creativity/index.html?iref=allsearch