ABSTRACT

Psychoanalytically informed thinking about psychopathology has increasingly come to employ a model involving two different levels of personality organization that serve to identify personality features that cluster and suggest a general etiological framework (Kernberg, 1975, 1976, 1984; Stone, 1980). These models focus on a structural approach that identifies internal mental structures (or intrapsychic structures) enduring across conditions and over time (Kernberg, 1980). Psychodiagnosis has come to focus on two basic levels of analysis: a structural diagnosis involving identification of a level of personality organization, and a stylistic dimension, identifying preferred patterns of cognition, affect experience and expression, and defense processes (Murray, 1993). The first aspect of personality identifies a level of personality organization (psychotic, borderline, or neurotic). The second dimension of personality functioning involves personality style reflecting preferred type or modes of adaptation. This stylistic dimension cuts across different levels of personality organization (although important aspects of defensive functioning may vary across levels of personality organization). Acklin (1992) outlined the role of these theories in providing a framework for the use of the Rorschach in the psychodiagnostic process.