ABSTRACT
The aim of psychoanalysis is rather personality change than merely symptom reduction. There is a long tradition in psychoanalytic research to assess personality organization or structure as a crucial measure of mental health and outcome of psychotherapy, respectively. Only recently, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013) and International Classification of Diseases – ICD-11 (World Health Organization 2023) have adopted this psychoanalytic concept as personality functioning into the diagnostic criteria for personality disorders. This offers a chance to investigate personality pathology as well as treatment outcome from a psychoanalytic perspective without opposing the psychiatric mainstream. As a consequence, it is recommended to include measures of personality organization as well as mainstream measures of personality functioning into psychoanalytic psychotherapy research.
