ABSTRACT
Sidney Blatt's theorizing has ranged over the entire landscape of clinical psychology, from personality assessment to psychopathology to treatment. Of special importance is the seminal article by Blatt and Shichman (1983), the ®rst comprehensive formulation of psychopathology as distortions of the normal developmental processes of relatedness and self-de®nition. This theoretical framework was elaborated in later works, including Blatt (1990), Blatt and Homann (1992), Blatt and Zuroff (1992), and Blatt, Auerbach and Levy (1997). Blatt's views, which derive from psychoanalysis, cognitive developmental theory, and attachment theory, have been responsible for over 25 years of innovative research on psychopathology, especially depression. Without attempting to summarize the entirety of Blatt's theory, we will highlight four key attributes of the theory that differentiate it from other contemporary frameworks.
