ABSTRACT
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) was developed to help in particular with presentations that therapists find difficult to address. Initially Marsha Linehan worked with people attempting suicide and with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Dialectics is important in DBT as an alternative to taking a judgemental stance and arguing with clients and others in the caring system. There may be environmental factors, even from the baby’s time in the womb, which interact with biological factors. All of these examples mean an ‘invalidating’ environment for the child, which in turn affects the child’s biological functioning. The learning history from this context is carried with the person to new environments. The bio-social theory of BPD lays out how DBT sees maladaptive patterns of behaviour emerge through a person’s development and history. On the biology side, there may be genetic predispositions to having a sensitive nervous system that is easily aroused and takes longer to soothe.
