Abstract
Growing evidence shows that diagnosing and treating borderline personality disorder (BPD) is of high relevance for affected youths. Although identity crisis is part of the normative developmental process, identity diffusion is a potential candidate for being an appropriate concept in further developing screening tools and interventions for BPD treatment in adolescence. We hypothesized that severity of borderline traits (as indicated by the strength of their associations with identity diffusion) would be negatively associated with non-clinical adolescents' endorsement of borderline features' presence. We also hypothesized that identity diffusion had a central role in the network of borderline personality traits and could be conceived of as a latent organizing principle of borderline personality disorder. In our study, 169 non-clinical adolescents (81 girls and 88 boys; Mage = 15.38; SDage = 1.52) filled out self-report measures of borderline personality features and identity diffusion. According to our results, having strong feelings and interpersonal sensitivity were the two most endorsed borderline personality features. Borderline personality features were positively correlated with identity diffusion. The more severe a borderline personality feature was, the less relevant it was for non-clinical adolescents. According to a network analysis, identity diffusion was the most central and least redundant element of the network of borderline personality traits. Results are discussed from a clinical point of view, further encouraging professionals to use identity diffusion screening tools to detect BPD in adolescence.
Highlights
This paper presents a study that investigated the role of identity diffusion in the organization of borderline personality features in adolescents
Previous factor analytic studies revealed the multi-faceted nature of borderline personality in adolescents [16,17,18] and Paris [54] even argued that each feature of borderline personality disorder reflects different diatheses, our results showed that identity diffusion—as measured by AIDA [12]—played a central role in the network of borderline personality features in nonclinical adolescents
We suggest that the heterogeneous nature of borderline personality disorder [55] can become less perplexing if the diverse symptoms are conceptualized as stemming from a single source, namely identity diffusion
Summary
This paper presents a study that investigated the role of identity diffusion in the organization of borderline personality features in adolescents. Relying on this definition and a review of social-cognitive and psychopathology oriented psychodynamic accounts of identity, Goth et al [12] suggest two meaningful components of identity development: continuity and coherence Both components are represented in three domains of psychosocial functioning: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and the level of mental representations. The two factors were [1] internally oriented and [2] externally oriented criteria, composed of avoidance of abandonment, identity disturbance, chronic feeling of emptiness, and stressrelated paranoid ideation for internally oriented criteria and unstable relationships, impulsivity, suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors, and inappropriate anger for externally oriented criteria From these results we can conclude that albeit there is a single label for this disorder in taxonomy, BPD is a very heterogeneous construct. We hypothesized that identity diffusion had a central role in the network of borderline personality traits and could be conceived of as a latent organizing principle of borderline personality disorder
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