A long time ago there existed another diagnosis crudely named the “As-If Personality.” The “As-if” Personality, now folded into the diagnosis of “Borderline Personality Disorder” (BPD), was described by psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch in 1942. She was led to create the diagnosis after seeing people who, lacking a sense of their interior “self,” compensated by forms of mimicry, becoming chameleons who acted “as if” they are something else. According to psychoanalytic theory, ea