A Rorschach record & a narrative poem are examined to determine how imagination expresses the psychological trauma of being exposed as an impostor. The S had pretended to be a doctor. The role is seen as an imaginative identity designed with an adaptive purpose. A Jungian analysis of his suicide attempt & the Rorschach suggest the impostor role was a masculine compensatory fantasy that served as a counterforce to negative maternal imagery, linked to death, in his imagination. 9 refs.