Personality Disorders in Modern Life 2ND ED by THEODORE MILLON

Author:THEODORE MILLON [MILLON, THEODORE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2012-12-11T07:34:59+00:00

c09.qxd 5/24/04 11:08 am Page 309

THE PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

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time, histrionics do not develop a strong superego because they have few qualms about transgressing commitments or manipulating those around them.

Consider Monique (Case 9.2), who has a lot going for her, but she cannot seem to remain monogamous. Like Yvonne, she seems to have a need for stimulation. New relationships excite her, though she quickly becomes bored, to the point that she feels the need to “return to partying and drinking.” Now that her writer husband has settled down, she feels the urge to return to the same pattern that produced her two previous divorces, the desire to begin a secret and exciting affair. When she presents for therapy, she exhibits many of the classical symptoms. Her emotions run the gamut from laughter to sadness. She sexualizes her interaction with the interviewer by deliberately creating sexual imagery. Her need for attention is consistent with her social butterfly, cheerleading history, becoming pathological in her depressive reaction when her girlfriend was voted homecoming queen and again in her interest in extramarital relationships. The impressionistic cognitive style of the histrionic is evident in her description of her high school years, and a theatrical, exaggerated emotionality can be seen in the dramatic flourish that accompanies it. Finally, there is evidence that she considers relationships to be more intimate than they really are. She married her first husband after having known him only three weeks, though, “It felt like we’d known each other all our lives.”

She probably feels the same way about her lovers, something that justifies each affair and contributes to its beginning.

If Monique’s superego development were more robust, such desires would either be inhibited or never reach consciousness. Moreover, if her ego identity were more solidly anchored, she would long ago have developed goals that would further define her place in the world and give meaning to her existence, and she probably would not have a history of nontraditional life choices or alcohol abuse. Like other histrionics, Monique has short-circuited her natural developmental process. By sexualizing relationships prematurely, histrionics lure powerful others toward them so they may ease their way, reward their desires, and reduce their frustrations. Like other histrionics, Monique has no desire to develop a deep, abiding, solid sense of identity. Thus, histrionics remain, as W. Reich (1933) noted, “thinly armored,” with only a veneer of selfhood to cover the drives and dependencies of an infantile id. As such, they continue to be dominated by the pleasure principle, as expressed through their need to be the center of attention; persistent stimulus-bound and sensation-seeking behavior; dramatic, theatrical displays; and even primitive regressions into fantasy, called primary process thinking. When anxiety threatens, their thin self tends to fragment or dissociate under the strain, regresses into primitive fantasy, or redirects stress somatically into the body, where it reappears as symptoms not easily accounted for by a legitimate medical condition, possibly Yvonne’s situation.

The development of the higher functioning hysterical personality is similar to that of the histrionic, in that both have oral-dependency concerns.

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