Types of personality in psychoanalytic diagnostics
When conducting psychoanalytic therapy, eachthe specialist uses psychoanalytic diagnostics to establish the type of the client's personality. Such diagnostics are usually performed at the beginning of treatment during the preparatory stage of the work, during which the survey is conducted, a diagnostic interview, an anamnesis and a joint development of the direction of further work. Types of personality are determined for the effective implementation of all the purposes of diagnostic work.
Purposes of diagnostics:
1) To develop a plan for furtherpsychoanalytic work; with each client, depending on his personality type, a specific form is planned and the duration of individual therapy is established.
2) To make a prediction of psychoanalytic work, depending on what types of personality are exposed to one or another therapeutic technique.
3) To protect the client from unjustified expectations. Having correctly diagnosed, the therapist can not only notify the client about the complexity and duration of joint activities, but also point out the need to make efforts to work on the problem.
4) To establish interaction based on empathy, i.e. Diagnosis helps to better understand the client, his difficulties, experiences, possible causes of the stated problem.
5) In order to prevent attempts to abandontreatment, if it seems too long, difficult, requiring work on yourself. The psychoanalyst establishes the types of conflict persons and the corresponding ways of working with them when an acute situation arises, which can lead to the rupture of therapy.
Diagnosis based on psychoanalytic theories
Nancy Mc-Williams forpsychoanalytic diagnostics suggests using two theories of psychoanalysis: the theory of drives of Sigmund Freud and the theory of ego-psychology, the founder of which was Anna Freud - daughter and assistant of her father.
1) Using the theory of drives, all types of personalityare subdivided depending on the fixation at a particular stage of psychosexual development on persons with oral, anal or phallic character, which was accepted by researchers and was reflected in their writings. For example, in Wilhelm Reich in the work "Analysis of character."
2) Ego-psychology represents the character of a personin the form of a set of psychological defenses, through which a person develops his adaptive mechanisms and protective reactions. Diagnosis of appropriate protective mechanisms allows more precise identification of the types of personality of clients visiting a psychoanalyst.
Diagnosis of levels of organization of character
People of one and the same type of personality can behave differently depending on how violent violations of character they are traced. Traditionally, there are three levels:
1) Neurotic. Patients demonstrate a high level of functioning, although they present quite deep emotional suffering. They are in contact with reality, adequately assess their state and make decisions to overcome them independently.
2) Frontier. Demonstrate readiness for reality testing. But they do not always do it successfully. Easily regress to the previous stages of development and use primitive defense mechanisms.
3) Psychotic. The testing of reality is difficult, the person uses fictitious images that are drawn from fantasies, hallucinations. They experience a basal distrust of the world around them.
Often in the diagnosis there is confusion: The hysteroid type of personality is mistaken for a psychotic character. It should be understood that the hysteroid (or hysterical) type of personality can be neurotic, borderline, and psychotic, although in all its manifestations it will strive for theatricalization, for demonstrating oneself.
Psychoanalytic diagnosis will be effective if the specialist uses a comprehensive study: determine the type of personality and the level of organization of the character.
