Comments on: Why Do We Use Personality Disorder Diagnoses Anyway? http://www.goodtherapy.org/custom/blog/2007/06/29/why-do-we-use-personality-disorder-diagnoses-anyway/ <<exploring healthy therapy & counseling>> Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:11:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Therapist Bournemouth http://www.goodtherapy.org/custom/blog/2007/06/29/why-do-we-use-personality-disorder-diagnoses-anyway/#comment-2005 Therapist Bournemouth Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:12:56 +0000 http://www.goodtherapy.org/custom/blog/?p=39#comment-2005 I have come to believe that the use of PD terminology can be harmful in the wrong hands...or out of the wrong mouth, but that the diagnostic criteria, categories, and resulting names are indeed useful as organizers of symptoms and therefore of my theoretical understanding of the client; and as a basis for designing/implementing especially outcomes validated therapy. In all cases I must remember that each of my clients deserves my utmost respect. I have never met a client who wasn't doing his or her best to survive, however difficult it has sometimes been for me to see the behavior as survival-oriented. Therefore doing no violence to my client means, among other things, first organizing my thinking around his or her understanding of life, not mine. Only then can I help my client discover more effective and useful approaches to life, organized around healthier behaviors, attitudes, and communications. This approach to my work influences the way I make use of diagnostic categories, and although I can't insist that other professionals involved in a case use such categories appropriately, I can empower my clients when abuses (coldness, being abandoned, being given the wrong diagnosis, etc.) occur. I believe I'm following Noah's lead here, in that not taking the behaviors of our clients personally, extended to also not taking the behaviors/attitudes of other professionals personally ('on behalf of the client') is one of the keys to a healthy, successsful therapy. Melissa I have come to believe that the use of PD terminology can be harmful in the wrong hands…or out of the wrong mouth, but that the diagnostic criteria, categories, and resulting names are indeed useful as organizers of symptoms and therefore of my theoretical understanding of the client; and as a basis for designing/implementing especially outcomes validated therapy.

In all cases I must remember that each of my clients deserves my utmost respect. I have never met a client who wasn’t doing his or her best to survive, however difficult it has sometimes been for me to see the behavior as survival-oriented. Therefore doing no violence to my client means, among other things, first organizing my thinking around his or her understanding of life, not mine. Only then can I help my client discover more effective and useful approaches to life, organized around healthier behaviors, attitudes, and communications.

This approach to my work influences the way I make use of diagnostic categories, and although I can’t insist that other professionals involved in a case use such categories appropriately, I can empower my clients when abuses (coldness, being abandoned, being given the wrong diagnosis, etc.) occur.

I believe I’m following Noah’s lead here, in that not taking the behaviors of our clients personally, extended to also not taking the behaviors/attitudes of other professionals personally (’on behalf of the client’) is one of the keys to a healthy, successsful therapy.

Melissa

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