Pseudoidentities in Cluster B Personality Disorders: Spectacle and Simulacra

The Narcissist’s Time

Patients with Cluster B personality disorders experience no time (timeless), memory, continuity, self, or core identity. They are mere simulacra and spectacles.

Most narcissists exhibit both overt (grandiose-entitled) and vulnerable traits. In my work, I suggest that cluster B patients transition between overt, collapsed, and covert states of their personality disorders when they are mortified.

But, how is it possible? After all, the traits of a covert are diametrically opposed to those of an overt!

Even in healthy, normal folks, traits are not constant over the lifespan and under conditions of extreme endogenous or exogenous stress or trauma.

This is especially true if the patient suffers from identity diffusion or disturbance.

Each state is narrative which provides a pseudo-identity. Pseudoidentities are ego functions (resources) and simulations (probes). In the absence of a unitary, stable core (identity disturbance and identity diffusion), the patient shape-shifts between self-states, replete with their own unique traits, affect, cognitions, and behaviors. In extremis, these self-states are utterly dissociated (most forms of DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder).

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