Personality Organization, Personality Styles, and the Emotional Reactions of Treating Clinicians

This study explores the relationship between clinicians’ emotional reactions and patients’ level of personality organization and personality style assessed according to the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2 (Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017). Level of personality pathology was positively associated with helpless and overwhelmed responses and negatively with positive responses. Parental and disengaged responses were associated with schizoid, anxious and dependent personalities. Parental and criticized responses were associated with narcissistic personalities; their depressed versions were positively associated with parental reactions, but negatively with positive reactions. Parental and overwhelmed responses were associated with counter-dependent and passive-aggressive dependent personalities; the latter also with criticized reactions. Disengaged responses were associated with depressive personalities, particularly with their introjective subtypes, obsessive-compulsive and somatizing personalities. Overwhelmed reactions were associated with relational self-defeating and hysterical/histrionic personalities, the latter also with sexualized reactions. Sexualized and helpless reactions were connected to hypomanic personalities. Findings show that emotional reactions can be useful for understanding personality features.