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Abstract:
Patients with a personality disorder are a group of people with high risk
for developing different psychopathologic phenomena from Axis I mental
disorders. Therefore many transference-countertransference problems may
occur. The patient-therapists relationship is also under the influence of
the implicit presumptions of the therapists. The aim of this article is to
identify these presumptions in two groups of therapists – in the group of
psychiatrists and clinical psychologists that have more professional
knowledge about personality disorders and the group of general practitioners
that also have an important influence on the patients’ well being. The
therapists were asked for free associations to the term »personality
disorders« and for presumptions about the etiology of the disorder. The
associations were divided on the basis of their meaning to positive, neutral
and negative. In
both groups the negative associations were more frequent (53.6% in the first
and 44.5% in the second group) as the positive associations (22% in the
first and 13% in the second group). Between the two groups there were no
significant differences between the presumptions about the etiology of
personality disorders. Dominating the negative associations in the first
group (psychiatrists and psychologists) were the problems with the patient's
compliance, the poor prognosis, while among the negative associations of
general practitioners the time shortage, uneasiness about the objectiveness
of the patient's symptoms and wider work-related and social problems were
the most pronounced.
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