Personality Disorders

Personality-related disorders of interpersonal behaviour: a developmental-constructivist cognitive psychotherapy approach to treatment based on attachment theory

“…In particular, the risk of stigmatization; (2) would be in keeping with the accepted developmental view of these disorders; (3) would eliminate the risk of PD being reified, hence, of regarding them as discrete disease entities that one has (Schneider, 1923(Schneider, /1950Millon and Davis, 1996;Pretzer, 1998); (4) would permit to integrate in a meaningful way, biological and psychosocial determinants of the disorders (Kraemer, 1992;Schore, 1994); (5) would account for the dysfunction in affect regulation that is frequently seen in patients with PD (Amini et al, 1996); (6) would make it possible to take into account a much wider variety of enduring maladaptive personality problems as actually encountered in practice than the relatively few categories comprised in the major classification systems, (Westen, 1997;Westen and Arkowitz-Westen, 1998) and finally, (7) would contribute in counteracting still-occurring and deeply-rooted negative attitudes toward the patients who receive a PD diagnostic label (Frosch, 1983;Lewis and Appleby, 1988;Hinshelwood, 1999). By anchoring personality-related disorders of interpersonal behaviour to the three main prototypical patterns of insecure (anxious) attachment (A, insecure-avoidant; C, insecure-ambivalent, and D, disorganized/disoriented) identified by attachment theorists, three broad groups were suggested to be taken into account.…”