Psychotherapists’ emotional reactions to patients’ personality trait in personality disorder treatment settings: an exploratory study

Abstract

Background Therapist’s emotional reactions toward patients in clinical facilities are a key concept in the treatment of personality disorders. Considering only clinical settings specialized in treatment of personality pathology the present paper aimed at: (1) assessing any direct relationship between patient symptom severity and therapist emotional response; (2) exploring patients’ functioning configurations that can be associated with specific therapist reactions (3) investigating whether these relationships remains significant when accounting for other setting variables related to patients or therapist. Methods The present study included 43 outpatients with personality disorders who underwent a psychotherapy treatment in two Italian facilities dedicated to outpatients with personality disorders and their 19 psychotherapists. The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90R) was used to explore clinical severity condition. Psychotherapists completed the Therapist Response Questionnaire (TRQ) to identify pattern of therapists’ response and the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200) in order to assess personality traits of the patients. Results No significant relationship between the clinical severity of the symptoms and the therapist’ responses was found. Even when controlled for clinical severity condition, duration of the treatment, age and educational level of the patient or years of therapist experience, most of SWAP-200 traits appeared to be significant predictors of therapist’ emotional responses. Conclusions The present study confirms the value of therapists’ emotional response as a useful tool in understanding psychological processes related to clinical practice highlighting its context-dependent dimension.

State of the art of the literature on definitions of self-criticism: a meta-review

“…It has been argued that shame elicits self-critical thoughts and the consequent desire to hide or escape from an unpleasant situation, whereas guilt elicits thoughts of inflated responsibility, criticism, and remorse linked to immoral behavior or harm to others ( 104 , 105 ), even when associated with personal stressful events or psychopathological symptoms ( 106 ). An additional and complementarily field of research may also investigate emotional reactions of therapists when encountering patients with high levels of SC ( 107 ). Furthermore, it would be crucial to address research regarding the link between SC and psychopathology and extending this investigation to the potential connections with adverse conditions.…”