Core Self, Sense of Self, and Whole Self: The Potential for Harm in Using Personality Disorder Diagnoses

Abstract

This article explores how the use of personality disorder diagnoses can contribute to the pathologizing of trauma and distress and result in labeling and the subsequent marginalization of survivors of childhood trauma. The author considers the theory and practice of transactional analysis (TA) and how TA practitioners may collude with these norms. An alternative framework for working with people diagnosed with a personality disorder is proposed. The author identifies the value of clarifying the term self within transactional analysis theory, using the model of self and ego developed by Cox to map concepts of self proposed by Berne. Using case material from a TA-based therapeutic community, the author demonstrates how differentiating between the concepts of core self, a sense of self, and whole self can aid resilience, recovery, and empowerment in people who have been diagnosed with personality disorders.

Keywords:

• Transactional analysis
• personality disorder
• core self
• real self
• trauma
• self
• ego state model
• therapeutic community
• labeling
• marginalization

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank and acknowledge the many members of the therapeutic community and his colleagues Claire Griffel, Coral Harrison, John Heath, Vida Hedley, Alix Jagger, Issy Neill, Jay Prevett, Jodie Quigg, and James Smith, whose work together inspired this article.

Disclosure statement

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beren Aldridge

Beren Aldridge, MSc, Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy) is a psychotherapist, supervisor, and trainer in private practice in Kendal, United Kingdom. He is also a senior consultant at the TA Training Organisation in Leeds and works as a mental health consultant and trainer. In 2004 he was a founder of Growing Well, a farm-based mental health charity that he managed for 10 years, after which he spent 5 years as a lead psychotherapist within their one-day-a-week therapeutic community funded by the National Health Service. He is currently one of the UK’s delegates to the European Association for Transactional Analysis and an editorial board member of the Transactional Analysis Journal. He can be contacted at Porchlight Practice, 122 Highgate, Kendal, LA9 4HE, United Kingdom; email: [email protected]