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After exploring some philosophical ideas about time, the author wonders how time weaves itself into the fabric of selfhood. Nayman examines the contrasting experience of lived time for three different types of personality disorders, all marked by problems of the self: the narcissistic, the as-if, and the schizoid personalities. The thesis of this paper is that individuals with these disorders have a sense of self that is related to the perspective of time dominating their experience. Further, the author suggests that whether individuals feel they have a self or not depends on how they live in time. The mood tone of these types—the nostalgia of the narcissist, the disembodied hope of the as-if, and the futility of the schizoid—expresses their characteristic rootedness in time. Nayman begins the discussion with Lacan's concepts of lack, absence, and the missed encounter, of how they challenge the self's sense of wholeness and lead to a yearning to return to some lost primordial harmony. The discussion elaborates on the use of nostalgia by narcissists, and how this focus on the past creates the sense of being fraudulent. As-if personalities, on the other hand, are seen as being unsure of their very existence. They frantically search for objects of identification in the mistaken supposition that because they feel so empty, some phenomenon must exist to fill them up. This idea of a future in which they imagine a substantial self is constantly anticipated. In contrast to these first two personality types, schizoids cut off both past and future and are rooted in the present. Schizoids believe that the self never was and never will be, and so are plagued by devitalization and alienation.