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Hitting the Bull’s Eye in Personality Disorders Psychotherapy

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Abstract

Psychotherapy of personality disorders (PD) is gaining momentum, though the progress has been mostly concerned borderline PD, with the other disorders largely neglected. In parallel, many empirically tested approaches focus on a limited understanding of psychopathology, for example poor mentalization or affect dysregulation, while PD are complex entities; they require clinicians paying attention to multiple therapy targets in order to be treated effectively and for a hope of actual recovery. I contend here that a more comprehensive account of psychopathology is needed; therefore the papers in this special issue focus on some of these aspects, such as difficulties in mental state understanding, dysfunctional representations of self with others, poor affect regulation and lack of access to adaptive and healthy self-aspects. The papers included in this special issue try and provide the readers with an intensive qualitative account of how therapists can act and yield improvements in these domains, with the hope of improving clinicians’ abilities to treat PD no matter what their preferred orientation is.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Paul H. Lysaker for his precious comments on this paper.

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  1. Centro di Terapia Metacognitiva Interpersonale, Piazza dei Martiri di Belfiore, 4, 00195, Rome, Italy

    Giancarlo Dimaggio

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  1. Giancarlo Dimaggio
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Correspondence to Giancarlo Dimaggio.

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Dimaggio, G. Hitting the Bull’s Eye in Personality Disorders Psychotherapy. J Contemp Psychother 44, 65–70 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-013-9257-5

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