Types of personality in psychoanalytic diagnostics

When conducting psychoanalytic therapy, each specialist uses psychoanalytic diagnostics to establish the type of client's personality. Such diagnostics are usually carried out at the beginning of treatment during the preparatory stage of the work, during which the survey is conducted, a diagnostic interview, a history and joint development of the direction of the future work. Types of personality are determined for the effective implementation of all the purposes of diagnostic work.

Objectives of the diagnosis:

1) To develop a plan for further psychoanalytic work, since With each client, depending on his personality type, a specific form is planned and the duration of individual therapy is established.

2) To make a prediction of psychoanalytic work, depending on what types of personality are exposed to a particular therapeutic technique.

3) To protect the client from unjustified expectations. Having correctly diagnosed, the therapist can not only notify the client about the complexity and duration of joint activities, but also point out the need to make efforts to work on the problem.

4) To establish interaction based on empathy, i.e. Diagnosis helps to better understand the client, his difficulties, experiences, possible causes of the stated problem.

5) To prevent attempts to refuse treatment if it seems too long, difficult, requiring work on yourself. The psychoanalyst establishes the types of conflict persons and the corresponding ways of working with them when an acute situation arises, which can lead to a rupture of therapy.

Diagnosis based on psychoanalytic theories

Nancy Mc-Williams offers two theories of psychoanalysis for psychoanalytical diagnosis: the theory of drives of Sigmund Freud and the theory of ego psychology, which was founded by Anna Freud, daughter and assistant of her father.

1) With the help of the theory of drives, all types of personality are subdivided depending on the fixation at a particular stage of psychosexual development on a person with an oral, anal or phallic character, which was accepted by the researchers and was reflected in their writings. For example, in Wilhelm Reich 's work "Analysis of character."

2) Ego-psychology represents the character of a person in the form of an aggregate of psychological defenses, by means of which a person develops his adaptive mechanisms and protective reactions. The diagnosis of the appropriate protective mechanisms allows us to more accurately determine the types of personality of clients visiting the psychoanalyst.

Diagnosis of levels of organization of character

People of the same type of personality can behave differently depending on how violent violations of character they are traced. Traditionally, there are three levels:

1) Neurotic. Patients demonstrate a high level of functioning, although they present quite deep emotional suffering. They are in contact with reality, adequately assess their condition and make decisions to overcome them independently.

2) Frontier. Demonstrate readiness to test reality. But they do not always do it successfully. Easily regress to the previous stages of development and use primitive defense mechanisms.

3) Psychotic. The testing of reality is difficult, the person uses fictitious images that are drawn from fantasies, hallucinations. They experience a basal distrust of the world around them.

Often in the diagnosis there is confusion: the hysteroid type of personality is mistaken for a psychotic character. It should be understood that the hysteroid (or hysterical) type of personality can be neurotic, borderline, and psychotic, although in all its manifestations it will strive for theatricalization, for demonstrating oneself.

Psychoanalytic diagnosis will be effective if the specialist uses a comprehensive study: determine the type of personality and the level of organization of the character.