Development of Personality Disorders: Identity as a Key Process

Currently, researchers and clinicians are conducting a wide-ranging re ection on personality disorders (PDs): signi cant aspects on this topic are the need to delineate the core domains that de ne personality pathology, as well as the demand to formulate a clinically relevant description of PDs. Within a dimensional perspective, given the evidence of a strong relationship between identity pathology and PDs, identity emerges as a key process, considering both the subjective experience (integration vs. di usion) and the social-cognitive perspectives (degrees of development of identity processes), in unravelling aspects of the self and interpersonal impairment in personality pathology