The battle within the self, 1: An existential framework for understanding personality disorders

A new phenomenologically based model for understanding personality disorders is presented. This model draws upon the existential concepts of Dasein and pitch to explain how individuals with personality disorders have extremely constricted and rigid experiences of the world. When they were children, these individuals internalized and retained hypercritical, sadistic parental messages. Such covert parental voices are misidentified as rational evaluations by these patients who are deficient in their capacity to engage in rational self-evaluation. When these individuals are encouraged to observe and report upon the internalized self-attacks, their observing ego is strengthened and an effective groundwork is set for ultimate changes in behavior.