Exploring the interface of neurobehaviorally linked personality dimensions and personality organization in borderline personality disorder: the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and Inventory of Personality Organization.
Academic Article
Overview
abstract
Advances in our understanding of complex psychopathology will likely benefit from approaches to mind, brain, and behavior that seek to (a) specify those general neurobehavioral processes underpinning pathology and (b) bridge to other process-based models of psychopathology at different levels of analysis. Well-defined neurobehavioral processes (e.g., positive emotionality, negative emotionality, nonaffective constraint, fear, affiliation) and their phenotypic indicators are firmly rooted in neural substrates (Depue & Lenzenweger, 2005). Furthermore, long-studied psychodynamic psychological processes, such as identity diffusion, primitive psychological defensive functioning, and reality-testing dimensions, are important to understanding personality pathology (Kernberg & Caligor, 2005). Both theoretical perspectives view the cardinal processes involved in the determination of personality disorders (PDs) as relevant across existing PD diagnostic entities. The authors examined relationships between psychometric indicators of these two sets of processes, the neurobehavioral and the psychodynamic, in a well-characterized sample of individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD; N = 92). In bridging these two levels of analysis, the authors found that the alienation, aggression, and absorption constructs represent important linkages to the psychodynamic processes, especially primitive psychological defenses and reality-testing impairments. These results are discussed in terms of their potential for joining these two domains of analysis--a neurobehaviorally informed view of personality and the psychodynamic--in efforts to (a) foster a process-oriented approach, (b) resolve heterogeneity, and (c) facilitate identification of endophenotypes in BPD. The heuristic value of this approach for understanding other forms of psychopathology is also discussed.
