ABSTRACT
The concern could be raised, because of the word deficit itself, that what follows is a perspective grounded and stuck in a model of mental health care that sees presenting problems only as pathology and formulation as the ferreting out of deficiencies. Adherents of psychodynamic schools of thought have given much thought to identifying component capacities of psychological functioning, their normal developmental course, and levels of severity in their impairment. Of the several capacities that have been identified and researched, five stand out as having special significance for planning therapy. These are reality testing, reasoning, emotional regulation, relatedness, and conscience. Neurologically based deficits require neurological repair strategies or neurologically informed compensatory efforts, whereas psychologically based deficits require psychologically informed developmental repair strategies. The most obvious causes of neurological deficits that can affect behavior are the neurological and biological disorders known to affect cortical processing and emotional regulation.
