PDM-2 and its clinical application. Levels of organization of personalities, styles of functioning and their therapeutic implications

Faithful to the "prototypical" perspective of personality diagnosis, PDM-2 proposes itself as "a taxonomy of people" rather than "a taxonomy of disorders", i.e. paying attention to "who is" that person and not only to "what has". In view of the usefulness of this diagnostic manual for the formulation of the case, the authors propose three clinical vignettes that correspond to the description of the neurotic, borderline and psychotic levels of personality disorders. They emphasize that the proper use of PDM-2 presupposes a knowledge of the patient, an ongoing dialogue with the clinician, and a renunciation of rapid diagnostic reductionism. The value of PDM-2 is therefore to allow the subjective expressiveness of the patient and the clinician, without renouncing research and the general shared language of each diagnostic tool.