Articles Tagged "personality disorders"

Why do Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Get Confused? The World Health Organization’s 11th revision of the International Classification of Disease defines Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) as meeting full criteria for PTSD plus symptoms of disturbances in self-organization. Disturbances in self-organization can best be categorized as experiencing strong emotional dysregulation, negative […]

Clients request, question, or reject information related to their diagnoses at various times, and in a myriad of ways (e.g., “My partner says I have Borderline Personality Disorder, do I?”, “My mood is all over the place! Do you think I'm bipolar?”, “Maybe it's ADHD?”). At intake, clients seek clarification of the nature of their […]

by and
May 21, 2017

Ella Fitzgerald articulated memorably the personal meaning of ending relationships in her song “Every time I say goodbye, I die a little.”  Termination is a naturally occurring process, and one may wonder whether there is a need for discussing it in the literature. Psychotherapy, and the process of termination that is part of it, is […]

Individuals with personality disorders (PDs) are a heterogeneous group with complex presentations that are characterized by significant distress and/or functional impairment. Whereas the traditional aim of psychotherapy for PDs is to alleviate psychopathology, well-being has been gaining increasing attention in psychotherapy. In addition to alleviating distress, enhancing well-being may improve treatment outcome, studies suggest. In […]

The importance of group composition – the particular blend of patient characteristics in a therapy group – is widely recognized by group psychotherapists.  Skilled clinicians try to have an ideal composition in mind when selecting patients for group therapy.  Notwithstanding such ideals, the task of selecting group members is complicated by the fact that no […]

Personality disorders are a common phenomenon encountered by psychologists in private practice as well as other health care settings. The prevalence of personality disorders in the general population is estimated to be about 9%, according the results from a National Institutes of Health funded national comorbidity study (Lenzenweger, Lane, Loranger, & Kessler, 2007). Having the […]

Abstract The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between level of personality organization and type of personality disorder as assessed with the categories in the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM; PDM Task Force, 2006) and the emotional responses of treating clinicians. We asked 148 Italian clinicians to assess 1 of their adult patients […]

Can Individuals with Psychopathy Be Treated? From its first conceptualization in modern psychiatry, psychopathy has been surrounded with therapeutic pessimism (Cleckley, 1941; D’Silva, Duggan, & McCarthy, 2004; Salekin, Worley, & Grimes, 2010). Psychopathy is a severe form of antisocial personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, self-aggrandizement, a manipulative interpersonal style and […]

What is Affect Phobia Therapy? ‘Affect Phobia Therapy (APT)’ is an integrative theory and treatment model by which patients’ problematic features can be understood, particularly cluster C personality disorders (avoidant, dependent, or obsessive compulsive PD). According to APT (McCullough Vaillant, 1997; McCullough & Andrews, 2001; McCullough, et al., 2003), affects and sense of self and others […]