Personality Mapping: A Conceptual Framework for Surveying Personality Based on the Psychological Domains of Temperament, Attachment, World View, Mood Pattern and Coping Style

Sam Restifo

doi:10.4172/2378-5756.1000361

Abstract

The subject of personality has long been recognized as a central aspect of psychiatry. And yet, despite volumes of research, the field remains lacking in a conceptual framework jointly embraced by researchers and clinicians, the former mostly concerned with dimensional constructs of personality and the latter favouring prototype based systems. This article presents a conceptual framework as the basis for the systematic surveying of personality, whether in an academic or clinical context. It is necessarily theoretical in nature at this initial stage and, as such, modest in scope. It is primarily concerned with articulating an idea: a conceptual framework of personality comprising the five psychological domains of temperament, attachment, world view, mood pattern and coping style, which are familiar to researchers and clinicians alike. The distinctive feature and theoretical coherence of this model is due to the framework following the same sequence of steps as those on the path of personality development in the ordinary course of life.

Highlights

The subject of personality has long been recognized as a central aspect of psychiatry
The conceptual framework presented in this paper is centred on a set of five clinically familiar domains - temperament, attachment, world view, mood pattern and coping style - that re-trace the naturally evolving, sequential process of personality development
The mapping approach is better suited to (i) the process of clinical assessment and case formulation (ii) psychotherapy patients (iii) reviewing complicated or treatment refractory cases and (iv) teaching and training purposes

Summary

Introduction

‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory’ [1]. If we imagine someone’s personality as represented by an individually fashioned crystal prism, and a life event or psychiatric disturbance as a ray of light beamed into that prism, the resulting pattern of light that emerges from the other side will have been uniquely shaped by that particular prism’s refractive qualities. That personality evolves from the interweaving of constitutionally inherent temperamental factors and acquired characterological features [17] If we accept these points, we can integrate them and rationally derive a mapping framework comprising the psychological domains of temperament, attachment, world view, mood pattern and coping style. As an illustration of the complementary relationship between some of the different aspects of personality mentioned above, in clinical practice one sometimes sees patients referred with an apparently nondescript form of ‘depression’ who are troubled by an ill defined yet ever present unease with a vaguely existential flavour Such cases may have eluded a fitting formulation and diagnosis but can, be understood in terms of a disturbance involving a gap in, or incongruence between, the interconnected characterological aspects of (i) what the person truly believes in (ii) what he/she desires (iii) how he/she conducts his/her life, and (iv) their sense of personal identity. Assistance in navigating through the clinical tasks of case formulation, forecasting difficulties and tailoring treatment

Conclusion

Limitations