You can act “as if” in situations in which you want to create harmony, where perhaps the possibility of conflict exists, but you don’t want to be an “as if” personality. An “as if” personality is someone who has developed some kind of false self that he or she becomes comfortable with. You don’t have to be a crook or con man to possess an “as if” personality and “as if” personalities are not always the product of conscious intentions or decisions. A person may have unconsciously developed an “as if” personality as a survival mechanism and defense against real or imagined fears. Both acting “as if” and projecting a false self have their advantages. Acting “as if” if you are feeling otherwise negatively disposed to social situations can result in your making friends and influencing people rather than snarling and recusing yourself from society and having the kind of "as if" personality that results in a false self is great if you are a spy. Hopefully when Graham Greene and John Le Carre were in the spying business both used their literary talents to create false selves that enabled them to pose as something they were not in order to obtain information that would have been otherwise impossible to get. People who suffer from a neurological syndrome called Capgras Syndrome believe that lurking beneath the familiar looking face is an imposter, but the etiology of the condition gets more complicated when the object of their gaze has already compromised his own objective reality. In this regard, it’s important to ask, “can an ‘as if’ personality act “as if?’”
{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy’s blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}