How Unique Is the Role of Emotions in Personality Pathology?

Comments on an article The emotional underpinnings of personality pathology: Implications for psychotherapy by U. Kramer and L. Timulak. Kramer and Timulak present a timely and novel model of personality pathology that emphasizes its emotional underpinnings. The model is rooted in the framework of emotion focused therapy (EFT) which views emotions as essential for the construction of the self and for self-organization. Specifically, Kramer and Timulak identify three possible underlying impairments in emotional processing in personality pathology: emotion dysregulation, impaired emotional/interpersonal patterns, and impaired emotional meaning-making. Furthermore, elegantly linking theory with clinical practice, Kramer and Timulak describe ten corresponding, emotion-focused, therapeutic interventions (or tasks) that are hypothesized to address the abovementioned impairments. The model places a much-needed emphasis on impaired emotional processing in a class of highly prevalent and severe disorders. The model is integrative and incorporates both phenomenological and neurobiological aspects of emotions. The broad focus of the model makes it a flexible framework for understanding personality pathology and has the potential of pushing forward our understanding of the role that emotions play in it. The clear articulation of the model makes it both operationalizable and testable. The detail and precision in which the different parts of the model are described will likely inspire additional studies on the nature of personality pathology. Specifically, the model makes several assumptions that offer exciting future directions for research. To conclude, the model suggested by Kramer and Timulak is both coherent and thought-provoking. It is timely and important as it clearly lays out an emotional account of personality pathology rooted in an EFT framework—an influential framework in clinical psychology that has not been well integrated into understanding personality pathology thus far. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)