You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Three papers were presented that were indicative of two major trends in psychoanalysis at the present time: the need to demonstrate the validity and reliability of research into psychotherapy and the need to mesh psychoanalytic thinking with new knowledge of the neurobiological substrate of the mental apparatus. In addition, the recent tendency to “re-Kraeplinize” psychiatry was manifested in some of the work presented at the panel.
The first paper was “Towards a Total Inventory of Personality” by Michael Stone. Using borderline personality disorder as an example, Stone notes that personality types in DSM-III, in earlier studies, can be viewed as dimensions along which any person can vary. He feels that by refining this characterological approach he can make a contribution to determinations of outcome. He does this, listing a larger array of traits, positive, and negative.
He has devised a category of 76 traits in all, of which 36 are “troublesome to other people” and 14 are traits “troublesome primarily to the self.” He uses a Personality Profile Scale based on these traits to evaluate his borderline patient population and believes this is useful generally in the personality disorders to capture all aspects of personality, negative and positive, that could have some bearing on outcome of psychiatric disorder, including those category-defined personality disorders of DSM-III.
To quote him:
[U]se of the more complete trait-list, from which part of the scale (the negative trait section) was derived offers clinicians a way of looking in greater depth at the particularities of the maladaptive side of patients whom they are evaluating. It may also enhance the clinicians' alertness to the existence of traits that might have been overlooked. In particular chronic anger-hostility, dishonesty and contempt are major impediments in all types of psychotherapy.”
Harold Koenigsberg presented a paper entitled “A Method of Analyzing Therapist Interventions in the Psychotherapy of Border