ABSTRACT
There is no long-term or coherent theory building around the concept of the "as if" personality in psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, or analytical psychology. However, a computer search for references to the use of the term "'as if' personality" in both the titles and the texts of psychology and psychoanalytic and analytical psychology texts. More recently, two British psychoanalysts have addressed the "as if" personality in different ways. Ruth Malcolm Riesenberg considers that the "as if" construction is similar to a false self insofar as it is a response to a lack of maternal devotion or an alpha father. Jung identified the "persona" as one of the major archetypes in his system of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Della sought intensive, long-term analysis, after having risen rapidly in her profession, becoming the director of a number of leading organizations. The experience of early traumatization, often sexualized, or some disastrous abandonment, is a feature of the "as if" personality.
