ABSTRACT
Our personalities shape the way we experience ourselves, how we perceive things that happen to us, and crucially, how we relate to others.
Practitioners bring their own personalities to work and this may influence our reactions towards certain kinds of service users, such as how intolerant, fearful or indulgent we feel.
We may feel under pressure from the service user to respond in a particular way and this may be one important source of information about the service user’s personality, alongside observation of their characteristic ways of responding in a range of situations throughout their life.
There is no clear cut-off between normal and abnormal personalities.
It is usually more useful to think in terms of personalised formulation of an individual’s characteristic ways of perceiving and responding to situations.
