Abstract
As practitioners working within the NHS, the majority of our clients have received a psychiatric diagnostic label, for example, Borderline Personality Disorder. Whilst such labels fit neatly with the current emphasis on time-limited, evidence-based, cost-effective psychological treatments for ‘target’ issues, they tell us little about the client’s particular emotional needs and how the more ‘destructive’ aspects of clients behaviour, particularly towards the practitioner’s attempts to work with them, can actually be understood. This paper outlines the Object Relations approach to Borderline Personality Disorder which is disadvantaged in the NHS due to its typically long-term open-ended nature. This approach focuses on the human condition as a whole and provides the practitioner, regardless of their preferred therapeutic model, with a particularly detailed framework for understanding the client’s inter-personal behaviour and their own emotional responses to such behaviour so that the therapeutic relationship might ultimately allow practitioner and client to feel valued and empowered rather ‘trapped’ by the application of a particular label.
Publisher
British Psychological Society
Subject
Psychiatry and Mental health,Applied Psychology,Clinical Psychology
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