Linguistic characteristics of neurotic, borderline and psychotic personality organization

Abstract

Thirty patients were subjected to a Structural Interview by means of which 10 of them received the diagnosis NPO (Neurotic Personality Organization), 10 BPO (Borderline Personality Organization) and 10 PPO (Psychotic Personality Organization). About 2500 words and groups of words were extracted from the patients' utterances for analysis. The word-frequencies thus found were analyzed by a PLS discriminant analysis which yielded two significant principal components (main dimensions) explaining 57% of the variance. This analysis showed that the three groups of patients are well separated from one another and that there is a definite correlation between personality organization and linguistic variables. The main features of the BPO-patients in this study seem to be that they refer to positions outside themselves and their language is impersonal; we see this as an example of a vacillating identity. The NPO-group is characterized by an intense and rich language, signs of a more advanced symbolizing ability, deixis and high level defenses. The language of the PPO-patients is poor and its predominant feature is a lack of words; in our interpretation this indicates foreclosure and a lack of identity.

Multivariate modelling and personality organization: A comparative study of the Defense Mechanism Test and linguistic expressions

“…Support for a similar two-dimensional model of PO was also provided in studies by Jeanneau ( 1991) and Jeanneau & Armelius (1993), where the spoken language of psychiatric inpatients was investigated in relation to different forms of PO. These studies were partly based on the same pool of patients as the DMT studies mentioned above.…”

“…This indicates that the linguistic level is more characteristic for this group than the perceptual variables measuring unconscious defence mechanisms. The word variables in this case are the ones which earlier (Jeanneau & Armelius, 1993) were found as typical NPO variables, e.g. the first person singular pronoun, conjunctions, adverbs pointing to deixis (here, now) and emotional words.…”

“…In this study, focusing on patients with data both from the DMT method and a content analysis of the Structural Interview, three comparison groups were formed %and J Psycho1 37 (1996) according to the diagnoses of the Structural Interview; PPO (n = 8), BPO (n = 10) and NPO (n = 7). These subjects are subsets of the patients participating in the two studies presented above Jeanneau & Armelius, 1993) because all patients were not assessed by both the DMT and the content analysis of the spoken language. Due to a lack of neurotic patients in the longitudinal study, three of the seven NPO patients were used from our university training clinic for psychotherapy, assessed by the same diagnostic methods as in the longitudinal study.…”

Étude des différences linguistiques entre les organisations de la personnalité névrotique et borderline à l'épreuve projective du Thematic Apperception Test /

“…Les objectifs de cette étude sont : 1) de répliquer certaines des hypothèses de l'étude de Jeannau et Armelius (1993) propres aux mots de fonction, 2) clarifier certaines contradictions relevées dans la littérature des dernières années portant sur l'analyse du discours ainsi que 3) décrire les particularités linguistiques des organisations de la personnalité névrotique et borderline. En effet, il est possible que certains indicateurs linguistiques puissent transmettre de l'information sur les personnes, leurs relations et leurs comportements, ce qui pourra s'avérer une piste intéressante dans l'évaluation des processus de changement dans la psychothérapie.…”