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An interacting cognitive subsystems approach to personality disorder
Author(s) -
Duff Simon,
Kinderman Peter
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
clinical psychology and psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.315
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0879
pISSN - 1063-3995
DOI - 10.1002/cpp.490
Subject(s) - psychology , personality , cognition , schema (genetic algorithms) , interlock , cognitive psychology , discriminative model , personality disorders , cognitive science , social psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , information retrieval , psychiatry , electrical engineering , engineering
Personality disorder is defined as an enduring pattern of problems with cognition, emotional regulation and behaviour. Personality disorder is a common problem, but also a serious challenge for mental health services. A theoretical psychological model of personality disorder that is based on a scientific understanding of the architecture of cognition would provide a logical basis for treatment and further study. This paper proposes that the interacting cognitive subsystems model of a distributed architecture for human cognition can provide a theoretical account of personality disorder. Two inherent aspects of the ICS model, ‘non‐discriminative processing’ and ‘interlock’, are discussed. Non‐discriminative processing occurs when novel material is recognized as discrepant with existing expectations, but does not lead to a modification of existing representational schemata. Interlock refers to a situation where the unchanged output of subsystem processing is used as the input for another subsystem in a feedback loop. It is hypothesized that these two processes, together with abnormal content of the implicational representational schema, can explain the rigidity and maladaptive nature of cognitive schemata that are themselves believed to lead to the clinical features of personality disorder. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.