You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I think I was a little boy when I heard Helene Deutsch speak for the first and only time. Of course, it may have been that I merely felt like a little boy, but the image that I conjure up is that of my looking up at her as she complained (honestly) about what others were doing with her concept of the as-if personality. She compared this process of alteration of her concept to changes in an umbrella that had first its handle, then its materials, then its spokes all replaced, until one had to wonder if it was really the same umbrella.
My memory is pretty confident that she used this umbrella metaphor, although nowadays umbrellas are more often replaced than repaired. But the analogy might be a pertinent one. Is the as-if personality a relatively intact concept, or has it been transmogrified into nothing like it originally was? Is it a relic or still a serviceable tool? As a little boy, I could not possibly ask that or even consider the question. I am not sure I can do it even now, but I will try.
With her essay on the as-if personality, Deutsch felt that she was presenting a pathological collection that had not heretofore been considered and categorized. Although she initially wondered if her collection had something to do with schizophrenia, she seemed by the end of her article to have dismissed that possibility—a possibility that presented itself because of the quality that she considered