"Organizzazione di personalità, disturbi della personalità e reazioni emotive dei clinici: Una ricerca empirica clinicamente utile"

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the emotional reactions of clinicians and patients' level of personality organization and personality style diagnosis, assessed by the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual-2 (PDM Task Force, 2017). We asked 232 clinicians to assess one patient each using the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Prototypes-2 (Gazzillo, Genova, & Lingiardi, 2014) and to complete the Therapist Response Questionnaire (Betan, Heim, Zittel-Conklin, & Westen, 2005). Patients' 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, while 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, and with obsessive-compulsive and somatizing personalities. Overwhelmed reactions were associated with relational self-defeating and hysterical/histrionic personalities; the latter also with sexualized reactions. Finally, sexualized and helpless reactions were connected to hypomanic personalities. These findings seem to support the idea that emotional reactions can be useful for understanding patients' personality features.