Can’t Feel Your Emotion Though I See It: Resumption of Self-view in Perspective-taking May Be Weakened in Borderline Personality Disorder

Ng, H. C., Chiu, C.-D. Dr.

Submission type

Oral only

Scheduled

Parallel Session VI: Keurzaal, 09-06-2018, 13:00 - 14:30

Kernwoorden

dyadic affect regulation, egocentricity, perspective-taking

Onderzoeksgebied

Therapeutic relationship

Introductie

Interpersonal difficulty is central to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The tension in relating to BPD patients is not only manifested in their daily interaction with close-others, but also in therapy setting, making them difficult patients in clinicians’ view. An important aspect of interpersonal function is to understand other people when they are in an emotional state. Despite the prominence of the emotional disturbance account for BPD, this impairment may go beyond an emotional problem as recent findings point to the role of self in feeling other people’s emotions, in particular placing the self in another person’s experience. Diminished feelings for other people may instead reflect a problem with self. This is in line with the account considering self-disturbance as the core of BPD.

Materiaal en methodes

A conceptual framework will be presented to understand self-disturbance and interpersonal difficulty in BPD. Visuospatial perspective-taking is proposed as a probe to investigate self-functioning in BPD and its relationship with vicarious feelings and interpersonal difficulty.

Resultaten

It is hypothesised that BPD patients will show weakened resumption of self-perspective, and this inflexibility will account for diminished vicarious emotion.

Conclusie

This investigation will shed light on understanding self-disturbance in BPD and its link with interpersonal difficulty.