A Cognitive Morphology of Psychopathology

In contrast to contemporary approaches to psychopathology that establish diagnostic taxonomies derived primarily from differences in manifest symptoms, this paper, based on an integration of cognitive and psychoanalytic developmental theory, proposes a structural cognitive morphology for understanding and assessing differences among various forms of psychopathology, from schizophrenia to the neuroses. A theoretical model based on the development of cognitive schema, consistent with clinical and research data, considers schizophrenia and paranoid schizophrenia as involving fundamental disturbances in boundary articulation and recognition constancy, and considers borderline personality disorders as involving disturbances in evocative constancy. Also, a lack of integration of object and self-schema, expressed in either a distorted and exaggerated preoccupation with interpersonal relatedness or self-definition, defines two primary personality configurations that have implications for understanding the neuroses and subtypes of depression, as well as differential response to various types of psychotherapeutic intervention.