ABSTRACT
A significant proportion of the clinician's work is concerned with attempts to assist individuals whose behaviour and symptomatology are the expression of lifelong difficulties in forming and preserving close emotional relationships. Such patients are regarded as suffering from personality disorder. They present in many forms, often associated with diagnosable psychiatric illness such as hysteria (seen more often in women), schizoid states (seen more often in men), obsessive-compulsive disorder, or depression. They tend to lead chaotic, unhappy lives and often cause emotional damage to others. Psychoanalysts consider that such disturbances derive from failure in crucial phases of early emotional development, which leaves the individual without a coherent sense of self or a capacity to manage impulses realistically. They are often afflicted by feelings of futility, emptiness, and depression. Although at times they function psychotically, these occasions are usually responses to stress and last for no more than a few hours or days, rarely leading to a diagnosis of psychosis.
